Hillary Attorney Marc Elias Backs Mysterious News Site Asking Arizona Regulators to Hide Campaign Finance Disclosures – Site Believed to be Funded by Democrat Super PAC to Promote Democrats

A Marc Elias-backed media organization is asking Arizona regulators to ensure that it is not subject to campaign finance disclosures despite the site’s leftwing tilt, ties to the Democratic party, and promotion of candidates through social media advertisements.

This reporting comes as Trump holds a steady lead over Biden in the state, and Democrats are expected to pull more dirty tricks in another election.

Per Semafor:

Star Spangled Media operates a series of left-leaning websites including the Morning Mirror, a difficult-to-find, barebones blog that for the last few months has periodically published a few unbylined stories about seemingly random topics. Its “About Us” page simply reads: “Welcome to the Morning Mirror—where reliability meets fresh insight. Stay informed with us as we deliver on the matters that impact your life.”

Over the last few weeks, Star Spangled Media has started spending a modest amount to boost Morning Mirror stories on Facebook that tout the pro-abortion rights records of local Democratic candidates running for Michigan House seats.

The site is low on content, but it has the backing of the law firm led by Marc Elias, perhaps the Democratic Party’s best known elections litigator and a central player in 2024’s politics. And Elias’ law firm is moving to ensure the odd blog is treated as a journalistic operation, not a political one.

In a letter to the state’s campaign finance regulator, the Arizona Citizens Clean Election Commission, in late May, Jonathan S. Berkon, an attorney at the Elias Group, asked the state finance regulator to opine on whether the state’s campaign finance law applies to Star Spangled Media. The company’s activities, argued Berkon, do not constitute campaign media spending, and it shouldn’t have to report extensive financial info to state or federal campaign finance regulators.

Similar to this website, Arizona is also home to far-left nonprofit propaganda rag Arizona Mirror, which is funded by the Obama and Soros-tied Hopewell Fund.

While Star Spangled Media and its Morning Mirror are for-profit companies, the parent company does take money in the form of grants “from nonprofit organizations that are interested in funding the type of news coverage that Star Spangled Media undertakes and building an audience for the news coverage via targeted advertising,” Elias attorney Jonathan S. Berkon admits in his letter to the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission.

According to Berkon, these nonprofit grants are “treated like any other revenue derived from a commercial transaction.”

No advertising or subscription revenue appears to be generated by the site, and the volume of coverage, which focuses mainly on Democrat politicians, is minimal. Some of the other reporting on environmental issues, education, and business appear to have a progressive slant.

This is unlike other new sites, including The Gateway Pundit, which publishes a substantial volume of original news material on general, political, and cultural topics.

We are also owned and operated independently of any government, industry, institution, association, or lobbying organization and published for profit, entirely supported by advertising and subscription.

Semafor’s Max Tani further notes, “Despite Berkon’s argument, it is clear that there are some ties between institutional Democrats and the Morning Mirror.”

In addition to the Morning Mirror’s unclear sources of nonprofit funding, Tani discovered through source code that the site was created by progressive advertising firm SBDigital’s creative director and Democratic political operative Lucas Anderton.

DC-based former Democratic comms staffer and employee of Democratic PR firm Petkanas Strategies, Cesar Vargas-Torrico, is also an author on the website.

Some clients of Petkanas’, founded by Clinton campaign henchman Zac Petkanas, include Hillary for America, the DNC, Biden’s Building Back Together, and the Defend Democracy Project.

Among the stories, many of which have no author listed in the bylines, mostly Democrats, who are up for reelection this November in Michigan and facing Republican challengers, are cast in a positive light on issues ranging from mainly abortion issues to education.

The articles read like campaign press releases and are curated to cast Republicans in a negative light on these topics. However, in some of the earlier stories on the website’s “Local” section, three Pennsylvania Republicans are featured in a “spotlight” profile or a positive story about their agendas.

There is no author listed for the referenced reports.

The website appears it could be used to funnel money from dark money 501(c)(3) nonprofit groups to produce positive advertisements for Democratic candidates without violating laws prohibiting 501(c)(3)s from political participation.

It could also be a Democrat-funded propaganda operation, posing as independent journalism.

Elias attorney Jonathan S. Berkon reportedly, in an email with Semafor, “cast Star Spangled Media as a transparently left-of-center replacement for diminished local media,” which provides what Berkon calls “factually accurate information about legislatures, legislative policies, and legislative candidates.”

Who are the funders of this shady leftwing media company?

Axios’ Lachlan Markay discovered “breadcrumbs” which may show that David Cohen, co-CEO and chief strategist of Forward Majority, a Democrat super PAC, is behind the effort to combat conservative media in battleground states.

“Whoever’s behind Star Spangled Media and its “news” sites has worked to ensure they remain anonymous. And that’s what the Elias letter in AZ was all about: if SSM were forced to register as a political committee, it’d have to disclose financial info, potentially including donors,” Markay says in an extensive X thread.

Cohen’s description of his group certainly fits: “Forward Majority is winning back Democratic power in the states. Our innovative model is reshaping the legislative landscape in the states that matter most to national outcomes with an aggressive, scalable model to drive wins.”

— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) July 8, 2024

Per Markay’s 2022 reporting for Axios, Star Spangled Media was also behind Main Street Sentinel, a news site that Facebook and Instagram users in Michigan began seeing advertisements promoting in early 2022.

“The aggregated content — from both news sources and the White House itself — touched on skyrocketing gas prices and broader price inflation, blaming corporate price gouging and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and mirroring lines from the Biden administration,” reported Axios.

A majority of the content was in favor of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and used to attack Republican challengers. The Main Street Sentinel reportedly spent about $120,000 in the early months of 2022.

Both groups appear to be tied to Real Voices Media, “a massive network of social media communities in political battleground states” that was quietly formed by progressives in 2022 to back Joe Biden and Whitmer.

Markay further notes on X similarities in an amount paid from Forward Majority’s Michigan arm to Morning Mirror creator Lucas Anderton’s SBDigital advertising firm and the amount spent on advertisements run by Mainstream Sentinel during the 2022 cycle.

The Arizona Clean Elections Commission determined in a response last month, “Because The Morning Mirror has extremely limited output, and there is no information available about its editorial process, it is impossible for the Commission to determine whether its political articles—many of which appear to be generated by using campaign created media—go through the same process as its non-political articles.”

The letter continues, “Because the Commission cannot conclude the press exception applies, the Commission cannot conclude that Star Spangled Media is not a covered person and does not intend to engage in campaign media spending.” However, the agency noted that it “is not concluding the opposite” and seeks more facts about the outlet’s operations and presence in the state.

This is a developing story…