The Dark Money Game

When a powerful political lobbyist is found shot to death, his apparent suicide highlights a bizarre turn in Ohio's largest public corruption case accidently uncovered by federal investigators that was nearly concealed by loose super PAC campaign financing rules. FBI wiretap recordings ultimately unravel a conspiracy involving a secret $61 million-dollar slush fund for Ohio's Speaker of the House to secure power in order to pay back corporate donors with a billion-dollar corporate bailout at the expense of the state's taxpayers.

The film traces the tangled history of campaign finance back to the creation of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in 1975, the 2002 McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill, and the Citizens United decision of 2010 that has molded the shape and opacity of present-day super PACs which now flood the system with money. The film looks at the stealth influence of religious groups and explores the fine line between a bribe and a political "gratuity" or donation, and the reciprocity between well-funded special-interest groups and the political process as well as attempts to influence the judiciary at the highest levels.