By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: April 11, 2016 

Chapman Cubine Adams + Hussey, the official direct mail marketing firm for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which currently has two Presidential contenders – one of whom, Bernie Sanders, has won seven of the last eight state races – is overtly putting its finger on the scale for Hillary Clinton.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont announced his candidacy in April 2015, but in the photo above, posted to the official Facebook page of Chapman Cubine, its President, Kim Cubine, appears with Hillary Clinton and calls her the “future President.” Another Facebook post by Chapman Cubine on March 16 celebrates Hillary Clinton’s win in the South Carolina primary. (See graphic below.)

Kim Cubine and two of her partners at Chapman Cubine (Lon Chapman and Jim Hussey) show up in Federal Election Commission (FEC) records as individual donors to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and their firm shows up in FEC records as making 2015 donations totaling a stunning $239,703. Individual employees of the firm are making a large number of repeat small donations, some as small as $5 and $10, wittingly or unwittingly helping Hillary’s numbers of small donations stack up better against Bernie Sanders’ legions of small donors.

Kim Cubine is also listed as a “Hillblazer,” individuals who have raised over $100,000 for Hillary Clinton in the primary campaign.

Another serious problem in terms of perception is that Chapman Cubine is being paid millions of dollars for direct marketing campaigns by the DNC, while it is also receiving millions of dollars to work on behalf of Hillary’s campaign and the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee set up between Hillary Clinton, the DNC and 33 state campaign committees. That last Committee has been raising serious questions of impropriety since Hillary has not won the Democratic Presidential primary race.

In a February 20 article in the Washington Post, Lawrence Noble, a former general counsel at the FEC, currently with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, was quoted as follows:

“I’ve never seen anything like this. Joint victory funds are not intended to be separate operating committees that just support a single candidate. But they appear to be turning the traditional notion of a joint committee into a Hillary fundraising committee.”

The Washington Post article also reports that Elizabeth Jones, the Treasurer for the Hillary Victory Fund, is the Clinton campaign’s chief operating officer.

In an April 1 article at CounterPunch, headlined “How Hillary Clinton Bought the Loyalty of 33 State Democratic Parties,” Margot Kidder pulls the curtain back further on the Hillary Victory Fund.  The article quotes another campaign finance observer, Paul Blumenthal of the Huffington Post, as follows:

“It is a highly unusual arraignment if only because presidential candidates do not normally enter into fundraising agreements with their party’s committees until after they actually win the nomination.”

By functioning as both the direct marketing company for the DNC and Hillary Clinton, while posting their overt favoritism toward Hillary Clinton on their Facebook page, Chapman Cubine is raising further suspicions as to what else might be going on behind the scenes. Could they, for example, be coordinating the direct mail messages from the DNC and the Clinton camp to give Clinton an edge over Sanders? Clearly, based on their Facebook page and donations, they’re personally cheering for Hillary Clinton to win the election.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Chair of the Democratic National Committee, has come under withering criticism for scheduling the presidential debates on weekends and holidays.  It appeared to many that she was denying national exposure to Senator Sanders’ mushrooming campaign.  On January 20 of this year, Politifact did a fact check on Wasserman Schultz’ objections to the criticism. The investigator wrote: “Did the Democrats ‘maximize the opportunity’ for voters to see their candidates? We found there’s no fair reading of the Democratic debate schedule that supports this.” PolitiFact also found that as of January 20, “Democrats have held four debates with a cumulative viewership of about 42.5 million while Republicans have held six debates with a cumulative viewership of about 103.7 million, according to Nielsen ratings of same-day viewership.”

Wasserman Schultz, in addition to chairing the DNC, also serves in the U.S. House of Representatives from Broward County, Florida. Curiously, her campaign has benefitted from some of the same hedge fund billionaires as those sluicing money into the Super Pac supporting Hillary Clinton (Priorities USA Action), and the joint fundraising committee funneling money to both the DNC and Hillary Clinton (Hillary Victory Fund). See our related article here on the outsized role these hedge fund billionaires are playing in Hillary’s campaign.

When Hillary Clinton spoke before the DNC last summer, she promised to end the ability of corporations “to buy elections.” Just not this election it seems.