Murky group skirts rules to hide who's behind attack ads in battleground state: report

An ad attacking Sen. Sherrod Brown, (D-OH) over U.S. immigration policy was put out by a murky group that has a "scant" paper trail, News From the States reported.

The group, Citizens For Sanity, has yet to file with the Federal Elections Commission and hasn’t filed its annual tax forms, keeping its fundraising efforts – and it's backers – a mystery.

Anna Massoglia, the editorial and investigations manager for OpenSecrets, said the group can keep things vague because they’ve "avoided those ads with what are called the ‘magic words."

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In the Brown ad, the narrator rattles off a list of supposed policy failures but doesn't advocate for voters to vote one way or another.

“As long as they avoid those windows and those specific types of communications that are governed by the Federal Election Commission rules,” Massoglia said, “they can run these ads whenever they want.”

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