Last night, Trevor Potter appeared again on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” as host Stephen Colbert’s “personal lawyer”. Colbert, concerned about the lack of large corporate contributions to his Super PAC, enlisted Potter to help him form a 501(c)(4) to keep the identities of his big donors a secret.
And thus was born “Anonymous Shell Corporation” which will operate as a 501(c)(4) as "Colbert SuperPac SHH Institute" so that corporations can give to his political efforts anonymously, since they seem shy of admitting their political activities to shareholders and customers.
Colbert and Potter made the point that current loose IRS rules mean the new entity will not have to file anything with the IRS until 2013, after the next Presidential election, and even then the names of donors to the organization will not be publicly disclosed.
To watch Potter’s appearance on The Colbert Report, click here.
Potter is representing Mr. Colbert through his private practice and disqualified himself from any of the Legal Center's work in connection with Colbert’s political activities, which included filing comments with the FEC in response to an advisory opinion request filed by the Colbert Super PAC seeking a significant expansion of the ‘media exemption’. The Legal Center argued against this expansion of the exemption, which the FEC denied