Did Obama's campaign illegally coordinate with his Super PAC on the steelworker ad?

Lawyers defending against a complaint will attempt to whittle down the evidence to what we already know: to the similarities between Priorities USA’s ad and Cutter’s role in the conference call. They will then argue that, by having Soptic tell his story to journalists on the conference call, Cutter made the information “publicly available” under FEC regulations, thereby rendering any subsequent use of that narrative by Priorities USA perfectly legal.

This argument has its problems under campaign law: Making something available to the press isn’t always the same as making it available to the public. And it is belied by Cutter’s desire to hide her role in the OFA conference call to CNN. If Cutter had known, on May 14, that she was making the Soptic narrative “publicly available” so Priorities USA could use it legally later, she wouldn’t have had to feign ignorance to CNN of “the details of when Joe Soptic’s wife got sick or when she died.” Nonetheless, lawyers will argue that if super PACs can get into legal jeopardy by doing nothing more than letting journalists disseminate their ad to the public — the New York Times reports that Priorities USA has yet to put any significant money behind the ad — they can get out of legal jeopardy by relying on information that was already made public to journalists on a conference call, no matter Cutter’s true intent on May 14.

Lawyers also may argue that someone from the campaign did give the idea to Bill Burton — but more than 120 days before Priorities USA produced the ad. FEC regulations say that strategic information goes stale after 120 days and can no longer be counted as evidence of illegal coordination.