A federal bankruptcy court in Delaware is forbidding the release of information about who benefitted from millions of dollars of political spending by Extraction Oil and Gas. The company says release would enable its competitors to buy favor with politicians that it has developed relationships with.
“First, the case proves what a complete sham Citizens United really is. The Supreme Court pretended that corporate independent expenditures on politics don’t corrupt anything, and now Extraction openly admits that political expenditures are used to advance business interests.
“Second, dark money may have just gotten a lot darker. Delaware is the home to thousands of corporations, and now its federal bankruptcy court has ruled that companies can keep their dark money expenditures on politics secret in bankruptcy proceedings.
“In a sense, it is a special carveout for records that document influence buying: While companies’ day-to-day financial records remain available for public scrutiny in bankruptcy, now there’s a ruling that allows those companies to hide exactly which politicians and political groups they are bankrolling.”
Charlie Cooper
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