Boutique Law Firm Has Expertise in Shielding Campaign Donations from Public Disclosure
A boutique law firm in the small town of Warrenton, Va., has developed a lucrative specialty: It advises groups that want to influence elections without disclosing their contributors.
The firm, Holtzman Vogel Josefiak, is housed in a brick building that has “emerged as a nexus of Republican secret money and power,” Bloomberg News reports. Its clients include the super PAC tied to Karl Rove, American Crossroads, as well as Americans for Prosperity, a political nonprofit funded by billionaires Charles and David Koch.
Nonprofits able to hide the source of their funds spent unprecedented amounts trying to influence the 2012 elections, the story says. They have Holtzman Vogel Josefiak to thank. The law firm has argued in regulatory filings and in the courts that the groups have a constitutional right to participate in elections without revealing their donors. The firm has also represented clients that “created byzantine layers of nonprofits to protect the identities of their donors,” the story says.
The story says the work has proved lucrative. Managing partner Jill Holtzman Vogel, now a Virginia state senator, and her husband, Washington lobbyist Alex Vogel, own millions of dollars of real estate. They own a penthouse condo at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., and a home on a 50-acre spread in Virginia.
