Charles Lewis, who heads the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University and who founded the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, describes the Triad scandal of 1996 as a “historic” moment in American politics. There had of course been many bigger campaign scandals before then. But Triad was a new model. He said it was the first time a major corporation used a tax-exempt nonprofit as a front group or, as he put it, “a cutout to secretly influence elections in a threatening way.” He said the Kochs showed that “you could dump a million dollars on someone’s head
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