SLACK YOU LATER: Slack, the ubiquitous business messaging platform from Salesforce Inc., is debuting a new tool for business leaders to coordinate policy letters and outreach to Congress, the White House and other local or global policymakers, Salesforce's head of global sustainability, Patrick Flynn, told POLITICO Long Game's Lorraine Woellert . "We're going to bring our voice together and communicate to Congress or the president or the G-20 that climate matters to us," Flynn told her. The current process involves "a flurry of emails and back-channel communications," and the new feature brings those talks "to a single place. It's a massive streamlining of that effort."
ANNALS OF CAMPAIGN FINANCE: "A political strategist who was pardoned by the former president after being convicted in a 2012 campaign finance scheme is facing new charges related to an alleged 2016 plot to illegally funnel donations made by a Russian national to support then-candidate Donald Trump's White House bid," The Washington Post's Felicia Somnez and Isaac Stanley-Becker report. — " Jesse Benton, 43, who was previously a top aide to former congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)" and later ran the pro-Trump Great America super PAC, "was charged this month, according to a federal indictment in Washington unsealed Monday. Also charged is Roy Douglas "Doug" Wead, 75, a conservative author and former special assistant to President George H.W. Bush." — Prosecutors allege that Benton and Wead made a so-called straw-man donation, illegally soliciting a contribution from a Russian national months before the 2016 election that they then funneled into a joint fundraising committee. The pair then filed false FEC reports to conceal the true source of the funding, prosecutors say. "Federal disclosures from that period make clear the donation went to support Trump's election, though the recipient is not named in the indictment. Authorities allege Benton arranged for the Russian national to attend a fundraiser 'and get a photograph with' the candidate, 'in exchange for a political contribution.'" — "Benton and Wead 'concealed the scheme from the candidate, federal regulators, and the public,' according to the indictment. The court filing does not name Trump, but details in the indictment match a $25,000 donation that Benton made in the fall of 2016 to a committee that jointly raised money for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, campaign finance records show." CASSIDY ADDS LONGTIME APPROPS HAND: Sarah Young has left the House Appropriations Committee, where she was the top staffer on the Military Construction-VA Subcommittee, after more than two decades to join Cassidy & Associates as a senior vice president. Young is the latest Hill aide to end up at Cassidy in recent months — Samantha Swing, a former aide to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and a Harry Reid alum, joined Cassidy last month as a vice president. Earlier this year, Andrew Forbes rejoined the firm after serving as legislative director for the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), while Will Fadely joined as a vice president from The Wilderness Society. HEARING AID MANUFACTURER LAUNCHES PUSH TO SHAPE ACCESSIBILITY RULES IN WASHINGTON: Starkey Hearing Technologies has launched a new initiative looking to shape the conversation around various legislative and regulatory pushes in D.C. aimed at making hearing aids more accessible. The new initiative, dubbed Listen Carefully, will seek to make health care professionals' voices more prominent as Democrats in Congress weigh expanding Medicare benefits to include hearing. — The company's push also looks to counter "misinformation" surrounding an executive order from President Joe Biden this year targeting the lack of over-the-counter hearing aids, as the industry awaits regulations from FDA that were due last year. As the push ramps up, lobbying disclosures show Starkey brought on a new outside lobbying firm at the beginning of August, retaining Robert White Associates in addition to its existing bench of lobbyists at Forbes-Tate and The Petrizzo Group. — "As the largest American-owned hearing aid manufacturer, Starkey has a responsibility to share accurate information with lawmakers about hearing healthcare, to help guide informed legislative policies," Starkey President and CEO Brandon Sawalich said in a statement. "Together, we will be a voice for the millions of Americans who suffer from hearing loss and are looking to officials in Washington to get OTC hearing aid regulation and Medicare expansion right." REGULATORS MOVE TO CRACK DOWN ON STABLECOINS: "The Treasury Department is moving to rein in a new class of cryptocurrencies whose popularity as a payment method is skyrocketing," POLITICO's Victoria Guida reports, "citing a need to head off potential risks to consumers and to the financial system. So-called stablecoins — payment tokens that differ from other cryptocurrencies because their value is often pegged to the U.S. dollar — are drawing scrutiny because they have already been used in trillions of dollars' worth of lightning-fast transactions and could transform the way Americans pay for things. Treasury and other regulators want to ensure that they're reliable, even during financial panics." — "The new attention is setting up a clash between the emerging crypto industry and financial regulators — and is also feeding tension between the upstarts and more traditional firms like banks, which dominate the payments industry. Yet it's also a sign that, even as assets like Bitcoin grab headlines as speculative investments, virtual currencies are steadily becoming more enmeshed in the U.S. financial system. 'There are some benefits to consumers that are worth exploring; namely, facilitation of faster payments,' FDIC Chair Jelena McWilliams said in an interview. 'But there are also risks if stablecoins are adopted more broadly.'" CORRECTION: Monday's edition of Influence misspelled Scott Nance's name. PI regrets the error. | 
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