Andrew Yang’s Corporate Speaking Fees Become Major Campaign Issue

Andrew Yang pulled in tens of thousands of dollars giving speeches to corporate leaders, which isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, but it does sound similar to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 baggage (though at a much lower rate.) But the FEC is now saying that this could run afoul of FEC rules since he used his campaign logo in the speeches and was an official candidate at the time. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.

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So Andrew Yang's got a bit of a problem and no, I'm not talking about the a cult like mentality of his supporters. I'll get to that in just a moment. But Andrew Yang's problem are the speeches that he gave to corporations, places like JP Morgan Chase, you know, one of the banks that help burn down the US economy never once had to pay any kind of real penalty for the shenanigans they pulled, screwing over American workers, screwing over American retirees and Andrew Yang about a year or so ago thought, you know what, it'd be a good idea to go give a speech to them and then take their blood money. Five speeches for roughly $10,000 now that's not good. Okay, that's not good that Andrew Yang did this after all. I mean, let's not forget. Let's fair is fair. We criticized the hell out of Hillary Clinton for giving those corporate speeches ahead of the 2016 election, but she made hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Andrew Yang, just, you know, 10 or so. So obviously she got paid a lot more. So it's not necessarily the same level, but the principle of it is exactly the same. Andrew Yang saw the criticism Hillary Clinton got but decided the money was too sweet to pass it up. So that's a problem. He was seduced by the dollar sign. But here's where things get a little bit tricky and Andrew Yang may have run a foul of the law, uh, according to FEC, they're looking into these speeches right now because Andrew Yang announced that he was running for president in early of 2017 and gave these speeches in 2018 so he gave these speeches technically as a Democratic presidential candidate. So if these were viewed as campaign events, he would be running a foul of FEC laws and this money he was paid would have to be considered a campaign contribution.

Then it would have exceeded the limits. And then you run into some very serious legal issues. But Yang says he was not speaking to these banks as a candidate. He was talking about his book, the war on normal people. And if that is the case, then the FEC says, okay, cool, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Have a nice day. Um, except the problem is that one of these powerpoints that uh ABC News got Ahold of that he gave in one of these speeches, it actually had his presidential logo in it that would at that point qualify as a violation of the FEC rules. Now here's the thing. I, I think at the end of this, the FTC is going to come out and say, listen, he was not doing this as a candidate. We do not think that he violated any rules. Andrew Yang, you are free to go. And to be honest, I kind of feel the same way. I don't think Andrew Yang broke the law here. I don't think he intentionally tried to break the law here either. What I do have a problem with is the fact that these speeches occurred to begin with,

right?

He knows what these banks have done.

he knows the, the harm they've inflicted on the American public and continued to inflict today. But he still said, you know what? I want that money. I want to sell more books. I want to increase my popularity. So I'm willing to sell out my values to go do that. That's a problem. Now to his followers, I don't mean every single person who supports Andrew Yang is a cult member. Okay, let's get that straight out of the way. Andrew Yang has said some things that I wholeheartedly agree with. Andrew Yang has also said quite a few things that I don't understand what the hell he just said. Case in point this past weekend on Twitter, he tweeted something out to the effect of, I'm trying to paraphrase it, trying to

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