Center for Public Integrity: How Bernie beat the clock -- and avoided disclosure [View all]

[pnwmom]

It is not only income tax forms that Bernie has been reluctant to share. In his 2016 run for the Presidency, the candidate who argues for "transparency" in government successfully avoided filing his own FEC (Federal Election Commission) forms by asking for repeated extensions, and then running out the clock.

Why is he so reluctant to make his -- and even his campaign's -- financial information public? If this were anyone else, it would suggest that there is something he'd rather hide.

https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/how-bernie-sanders-beat-the-clock-and-avoided-disclosure/

Sanders insisted, for example, “on complete transparency regarding the funding of campaigns.” He decried “huge piles of undisclosed cash” benefiting candidates.

But when federal law required Sanders to reveal, by mid-May, current details of his personal finances, his campaign lawyer asked the Federal Election Commission for a 45-day extension.

Request granted.

On June 30, Sanders’ campaign requested a second 45-day extension, saying the senator had “good cause” to delay because of his “current campaign schedule and officeholder duties.”

Again, regulators approved Sanders’ punt.

Now that Sanders’ second extension has expired, spokesman Michael Briggs confirmed to the Center for Public Integrity that the senator won’t file a presidential campaign personal financial disclosure after all.

SNIP

Therefore, in the teeth of a Democratic primary where Sanders posed a bona fide threat to Clinton, voters couldn’t definitively know whether Sanders — historically one of the Senate’s least wealthy members — suddenly parlayed his political fame into personal profit. Or, for that matter, whether he sustained financial distress.