Web of Connections

Reuters:

A top lawyer for President Bush's re-election campaign resigned on Wednesday after disclosing he provided legal advice to a group that accuses Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry of lying about his Vietnam War record. Benjamin Ginsberg was the second person to quit the Bush campaign over ties to the group, called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The Bush's campaign insists it has no relationship with the group and has denied Kerry's charge the president's re-election team is using such "front groups." "I have decided to resign as national counsel to your campaign to ensure that the giving of legal advice to decorated military veterans, which was entirely within the boundaries of the law, doesn't distract from the real issues upon which you and the country should be focusing," Ginsberg wrote in a letter to Bush. A copy was released by the Bush campaign.

The attempt by the Kerry campaign to smear the Bush Campaign with the actions of the Swift Boat Vets. seems total without basis to me. Even Leaving aside the fact that Kerry lawyers have similar ties to 527 organizations, the idea that an individual might work for more than one group or give legal advise to the campaign and a 527 group is a long way from saying that the two groups are coordinating their actions. I would suppose that there are a limited number of lawyers that specialize in campaign finance law. Since both 527 groups and political campaigns would need to draw on this limited pool, one would expect overlap to occur.