Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

It won't be easy for ShowPony DT to not declare after Pence has, but this 3rd link of yours says he has every reason not to.

Why Trump Declaring a 2024 Presidential Bid Would Be “Profoundly Stupid”
There’s a good reason candidates are coy about their presidential intentions.
Russ Choma ReporterBio | Follow December 17, 2020
[...]
But there is a hitch. “The only restriction on money in a leadership PAC—it can’t be used to campaign for an office,” says campaign finance attorney Brett Kappel. “You could use it to buy a suit, or pay your legal bills. He could put his kids on the payroll of the leadership PAC. He could put anyone on the payroll of the leadership PAC as long as they’re doing work for the PAC.” Trump could even put himself on the payroll, Kappel adds. But all those perks go away if Trump declares himself an official candidate. So if Trump were to declare himself a candidate, the hundreds of millions he has raised for his Save America PAC cannot be used for any expense directly related to his 2024 presidential campaign. If he wants to open a presidential campaign office, if he wants to hold rallies as a presidential candidate, if he wants to buy ads for his bid to retake the White House—none of that can be funded by this money.

“It would make no sense to become a candidate now,” Kappel says. “It would make much more sense to tease the possibility of becoming a candidate.”

Not only is it easier to spend money with a leadership PAC, there are fewer fundraising restrictions, says Paul S. Ryan, a campaign finance attorney and vice president of policy and litigation at watchdog group Common Cause. “Candidates need to be raising the money under a much lower contribution limit—$2,800 per election, per donor, for the 2024 primary, versus the Save America PAC which can raise $5,000 per calendar year per donor,” Ryan says.

So why would Trump forgo that money and flexibility? “It’s not clear whether he understands this,” Ryan says. “It’s hard to imagine he would have gone through that trouble of raising money into this new slush fund if he understood that launching a 2024 campaign meant it would be off limits to him.”

For decades, candidates have worked industriously to avoid triggering the launch of a presidential campaign before they’re fully ready. Ryan cites Ronald Reagan, who after an unsuccessful presidential bid in 1976, converted his presidential campaign committee into a PAC to support a variety of candidates and spent four years drumming up support and denying he was running for office. Early in the 2016 campaign, shortly before Trump got into the race, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Rand Paul each barnstormed across early voting states with the assistance of super-PACs or leadership PACs, paving the way for their campaigns for months while coyly (or not so coyly) denying they were actually running.

Trump, you might have noticed, is not great at being coy, and it wouldn’t take much to make his candidacy official in the eyes of the law. Ryan explains that Federal Election Commission rules dictate that if you raise or spend more than $5,000 as part of an effort to obtain an office, and you declare your intention to run, that makes you a candidate. At that point, you have to file papers for your campaign and begin complying with requirements—such as filing personal financial disclosures—and lose access to fundraising vehicles like your leadership PAC.

“It would be profoundly stupid for him to do that,” Kappel says of Trump entering the race prematurely. He speculated that Trump has probably been advised as much. Then again, Trump has not necessarily been known to heed his advisers. As Kappel notes, “He probably also got advice to not obstruct justice.”

Your 3rd - https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/12/why-trump-declaring-a-2024-presidential-bid-would-be-profoundly-stupid/

Back to the live hearing. It's well presented. It has potent potential.