The Republican Attorneys General Association offered big-ticket donors access to a secret legal policymaking bulletin board in exchange for donations of $25,000 or more.
The Intercept reported Monday that the RAGA offered those donors access to their "Attorneys General Roundtable," which included "posting access" to their "Briefing Room" posting board.
That "Briefing Room" the Intercept noted, is used by officials who work for Republican attorneys general to read and share files before participating in conference calls with the Rule of Law Defense Fund, RAGA's non-profit policy group.
Box.com, the website that hosts the posting and file-sharing board, "can shield the correspondence from public reach" despite campaign finance laws that dictate communications between elected officials and the two groups be made public.
A RAGA spokesperson told the Intercept that the 2016 information sheet offering access to the Briefing Room board "was worded incorrectly" and that the board is used only for members of the non-profit policy arm to share files with each other.
The Nebraska and Arizona attorneys general offices both denied records request from the board "on the grounds that the files were not produced by their offices and were posted to a third-party website," the report noted.
"Republican law enforcement officials in more than a dozen states denied having records of the bulletin board or argued that documents kept on the Briefing Room shouldn’t be made public," the report continued. "Nine offices said they have no records of communications with RAGA or RLDF."
Many large RAGA donors have been embroiled in controversy before, including the "dark money organization" Judicial Crisis Network, who donated $2.9 million to the group last year. They also led a $10 million campaign to ensure the confirmation of Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.
