On the recordMay 23, 2012
Not only did they not wrestle with it, it is not clear they even thought about it. When there are people who have come out of the judicial monastery--not quite the right word because they are men and women alike--but out of the separate province of high-end adjudication, they are not familiar with this. They did not think of this. They didn't think of that, and the other thing they didn't think of was that the threat of launching a multimillion-dollar negative attack against a candidate could have a corrupting effect, even if no dollars were ever spent. If the threat is successful, if the scheme works, there is no trail left to it. Before Citizens United, if someone wanted to make a threat, their threat was limited to a big PAC contribution, having a big fundraiser, things like that. It was not a real threat in the sense it could knock somebody out of their office. Now the idea that a corporate identity can hide its identity, can launder its identity through 501(c)(4)s and then launch a multimillion- dollar attack in somebody's State is a credible threat, and I think that is a threat, among others, they overlooked completely.
