Bloomberg BNA : OneWest Donated to Calif. Attorneys General Before Case Was Dropped
Donations by a business being investigated might be perceived as a conflict of interest, but campaign finance reform advocates Kathay Feng from Common Cause and Brendan Fischer from the Campaign Legal Center indicated that the situation is just a subset of the larger concerns about money in politics...
According to Fischer, associate counsel with the Campaign Legal Center, the California Department of Justice lists conflict-of-interest rules for attorneys general and campaign contributions but only for licensing and permit proceedings.
“There are standards at the federal level for attorneys general to recuse if they have a substantial personal or political relationship with the parties involved in the prosecution, like in the recent case of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, but they don’t apply to state attorneys general and the rules don’t specify any details about campaign contributions,” he said by phone.