Andy Kroll

Reporter

Andy Kroll is Mother Jones' Dark Money reporter. He is based in the DC bureau. His work has also appeared at the Wall Street Journal, the Detroit News, Salon, and TomDispatch.com, where he's an associate editor. He can be reached at akroll (at) motherjones (dot) com. He tweets at @AndrewKroll.

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Hillary Clinton Holds the Purse Strings

Democratic high rollers are hoarding campaign cash until Clinton decides whether to run in 2016.

—By Andy Kroll

| Wed Mar. 27, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

Zhang Jun/Xinhua/ZUMAPRESS.com

The courtship has already begun. A select few politicians are traveling the country, schmoozing with 1-percenters, attending the odd fundraiser, and quietly laying groundwork for—yes, that's right—a 2016 presidential campaign. Mere days after the November 2012 elections, for instance, several Republican governors met with casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who reportedly gave $150 million to GOP causes last election cycle. On the Democratic side, Governors Martin O'Malley of Maryland and Deval Patrick of Massachusetts are getting friendly with big left-leaning funders and building up their name recognition at invite-only meet-and-greets and out-of-state Jefferson-Jackson dinners.

But there's a striking dynamic at play in the donor world that is apparently unique to the Democratic side. Call it the Hillary Clinton Cash Freeze. According to Clinton's friends, fundraisers, and former campaign staffers, big Democratic money isn't going anywhere until she makes up her mind about launching a second presidential campaign.

[Read the full article]

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LaPierre To Bloomberg: Drop Dead

—By Andy Kroll

| Sun Mar. 24, 2013 9:34 AM PDT

NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre.

Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, on Sunday delivered this message to New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg: Spend all the money you want; it won't make a whit of difference.

A day after news broke that Bloomberg would spend $12 million on an ad blitz pressuring Congress to expand gun background checks , LaPierre lashed out on NBC's "Meet the Press":

He's going to find out that this is a country of the people, by the people, and for the people, and he can't spend enough to try to impose his will on the American public. They don't want him in their restaurants, they don't want him in their homes, they don't want him telling them what food to eat. They sure don't want him telling them what self-defense firearms to own. And he can't buy America. He's so reckless in terms of his comments on this whole gun issue.

LaPierre claimed that Bloomberg's ramped-up involvement in the debate over gun control had prompted a backlash: "Millions of people," many of them presumably NRA members, were mailing in $5, $10, and $20 checks "telling us to stand up to this guy that says that we can only have three bullets, which is what he said. Stand up to this guy that says ridiculous things like, 'The NRA wants firearms with nukes on them.'" He went on, "I mean it's insane the stuff he says."

As he often does, LaPierre argued on "Meet the Press" that America's gun violence problem resulted from poor enforcement of existing laws, not a lack of regulation. He said the NRA supported "better enforcement" of federal gun laws, and that the failure to enforce gun laws was the Obama administration's fault: "I know they don't want to do it, but they ought to do it. It's their responsibility." LaPierre declined to mention that, for decades, the NRA and other gun-rights advocates have done everything they can to gut the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the agency that enforces federal gun laws.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg Will Spend $12 Million to Push Gun Control Through Congress

—By Andy Kroll

| Sat Mar. 23, 2013 4:48 PM PDT

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg wants new gun control legislation so bad that he's set to spend a staggering $12 million of his own money on ads targeting US senators in a dozen states.

As the New York Times reports, Bloomberg's new wave of ads, which begin on Monday, support universal background checks for nearly all gun purchases, but do not mention a ban on assault weapons. The ads, run under the auspices of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group funded and co-chaired by Bloomberg, will target Sens. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Patrick Toomey (R-Penn.), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), Dan Coats (R-Ind.), and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.).

This Is How the NRA Lies to Gun Owners About Obama's Agenda

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The NRA Myth of Gun-Free Zones

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EXCLUSIVE: Unmasking the NRA's Inner Circle

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The NRA Myth of Arming the Good Guys

How the NRA and Its Allies Helped Spread a Radical Gun Law Nationwide

See our full special report on gun laws and the rise of mass shootings in America.

Bloomberg's $12 million ad buy further cements his position as the main political force challenging the clout of the National Rifle Association. For decades, the NRA has used its money and manpower to oust politicians who support any new regulation of guns in America. The threat of NRA attacks helped stifle any effort at new gun laws, including requiring background checks for most gun purchases and reinstating the ban on assault rifles, which expired in 2004. Now, by pumping money into Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Independence USA, his super-PAC, Bloomberg hopes to counter the might of the NRA, while giving cover to pro-gun-control legislators.

Here's more from the Times on Bloomberg's new ad blitz:

In each [state], the commercials urge support for the measure to require background checks for nearly all firearms purchases, not just those in gun stores, the most debated element of the legislation and a coveted goal of gun control advocates.

Mr. Bloomberg has singled out Mr. Flake, who already voted against the expansion of background checks in the Senate Judiciary Committee, by producing a special, scolding commercial aimed at Arizona. "Flake's vote," the ad declares, equals "no background checks for dangerous criminals."

The mayor, who over the years has spent tens of millions of dollars to support his favored candidates, holds the power to use his "super-PAC" to wield influence in the midterm Congressional elections next year and beyond. He said he would heavily favor "candidates who will stop people from getting killed."

"There is an easy measure of how you decide who those are," he said, noting that gun rights groups rate lawmakers. "The NRA keeps score of it for you. They are public information."

To those who might fear his financial might, he added: "If they pass sensible gun legislation, there is not an issue."

Bloomberg has scored a handful of recent gun-related victories. He pumped nearly $10 million into Independence USA in the 2012 elections; the super-PAC went on to spend $3 million to defeat Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.), a pro-gun rights congressman. Independence USA also spent millions last month in the Democratic primary for Illinois' 2nd congressional district to defeat Debbie Halvorson, who had an "A" rating from the NRA. Democrat Robin Kelly, whom Bloomberg supported, ultimately cruised to victory.

The NRA has said it plans to fire back at Bloomberg with an advertising campaign of its own. And an NRA lobbyist told the Times that it's confident that many Americans won't buy into Bloomberg's message. "What he is going to find out is that Americans don't want to be told by some elitist billionaire what they can eat, drink and they damn well don’t want to be told how, when and where they can protect their families," Chris Cox, the NRA's top lobbyist, said.

EXCLUSIVE: State Dept. Hid Contractor's Ties to Keystone XL Pipeline Company

A top expert who helped write the government's latest Keystone report previously consulted on three different TransCanada projects—a fact the State Department tried to hide.

—By Andy Kroll

| Thu Mar. 21, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

A woman protests the Keystone XL pipeline at a rally in Washington, DC, on October 7, 2011. Elbert Barnes/Flickr

Late on a Friday afternoon in early March, the State Department released a 2,000-page draft report downplaying the environmental risks of the northern portion of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would ferry oil from Canada's tar sands to refineries in Texas, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. But when it released the report, State hid an important fact from the public: Experts who helped draft the report had previously worked for TransCanada, the company looking to build the Keystone pipeline, and other energy companies poised to benefit from Keystone's construction. State released documents in conjunction with the Keystone report in which these experts' work histories were redacted so that anyone reading the documents wouldn't know who'd previously hired them. Yet unredacted versions of these documents obtained by Mother Jones confirm that three experts working for an outside contractor had done consulting work for TransCanada and other oil companies with a stake in the Keystone's approval.

When the Keystone report—officially known as a "draft supplemental environmental impact statement"—was released, environmental activists ripped it as shoddy and misleading. Russ Girling, TransCanada's CEO, cheered the report as "an important step" toward receiving President Barack Obama's final stamp of approval for the pipeline.

Outside contractors (managed by the State Department) wrote the Keystone report, which neither endorsed nor rejected the Keystone pipeline. The contractor that produced the bulk of the report was Environmental Resources Management (ERM), an international consulting firm. On the day the State Department published the Keystone impact report, the agency also released a cache of documents that ERM submitted in 2012 to win the contract to produce the Keystone environmental report. That cache included a 55-page filing in which ERM stated it had no conflicts of interests writing the Keystone report.

But there was something strange about ERM's conflict-of-interest filing: The bios for the ERM's experts were redacted.

[Read the full article]

Virginia Gov. Candidate Ken Cuccinelli: Outlawing Slavery and Outlawing Abortion Are Part of the Same Fight

—By Andy Kroll

| Wed Mar. 20, 2013 9:09 AM PDT

Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who is running for governor this year, has a knack for controversy. He told state colleges they couldn't include "sexual orientation" in their anti-discrimination policies. (Current Gov. Bob McDonnell assured the academy that no discrimination was tolerated.) He led a witch hunt against prominent climate scientist Michael Mann. (Cuccinelli is a climate change denier.) He requested that the exposed left breast of Virtus, the Roman goddess adorning the state's two-century-old seal, be brought in from the cold. ("Breastgate," the affair was called.)

And now, the latest addition to the Cuccinelli canon. On Tuesday, Virginia Democrats released a video of Cuccinelli comparing the fight to end slavery to the anti-abortion movement. "Over time, the truth demonstrates its own rightness, and its own righteousness," he said. "Our experience as a country has demonstrated that on one issue after another. Start right at the beginning: slavery. Today, abortion."

Here's the video, taken by a Democratic tracker in June 2012:

Cuccinelli added: "History has shown us what the right position was, and those were issues that were attacked by people of faith aggressively to change the course of this country. We need to fight for the respect for life, not just for life but for respect for life. One leads to the other."

A Cuccinelli spokeswoman told the Associated Press the release of the video was an effort by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, the former head of the Democratic National Committee, to "run a contentious campaign that divides Virginia."