On July 12, 2012, Cox wrote a letter to U.S. Senators in opposition to the DISCLOSE Act of 2012, a bill that would require disclosure of the corporations and high-dollar individual donors paying for “independent expenditure” political ads. In the letter, Cox stated that the Act’s “provisions require organizations to turn membership and donor lists over to the government” and would violate the right of citizens “to speak and associate privately and anonymously.” Cox threatened, “Due to the importance of the fundamental speech and associational rights of the National Rifle Association’s four million members, and considering the blatant attack on those rights that S. 3369 represents, we strongly oppose the DISCLOSE Act and will consider votes on this legislation in future candidate evaluations.” In fact, groups such as the NRA would not be required to disclose their entire membership or donor list, only the names of those donors whose aggregate donation during the reporting cycle was $10,000 or more. Organizations like the NRA could keep the names of some of their high dollar donors private under the legislation by setting up a separate bank account for independent political spending. Groups would only have to disclose the names of their high dollar donors whose money funded such independent expenditures. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in the controversial Citizens United decision endorsed this sort of disclosure as “the less-restrictive alternative to more comprehensive speech regulations.”

On August 3, 2012, the Associated Press reported that Craig, who is being sued by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) for allegedly misusing more than $200,000 in campaign funds for his legal defense following his 2007 arrest in a bathroom sex sting, seeks to fend off the charges by arguing that the incident was part of his official Senate business. Craig asserts that he was travelling between Idaho and the nation's capital for work and cites a Senate rule which include all charges for meals, lodging, hotel fans, cleaning, pressing of clothing—and bathrooms—as reimbursable per diem expenses. "Not only was the trip itself constitutionally required, but Senate rules sanction reimbursement for any cost relating to a senator's use of a bathroom while on official travel," wrote Craig’s lawyer in documents filed on August 2, 2012.

In the August 2012 issue of America’s 1st Freedom, LaPierre wrote, “For months I’ve warned you of the grave consequences our freedoms will face if [President Barack] Obama, his administration and its Capitol Hill enablers are reelected on Nov. 6 [2012] … Now Obama’s allies on Capitol Hill want to deny the right to political free speech to you, me and groups like the NRA completely and forever–even if they have to amend the U.S. Constitution.” LaPierre was referring to the “People’s Rights Amendment” introduced by Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA) in response to the controversial Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In Citizens United, the Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations and unions. Rep. McGovern’s amendment to the U.S. Constitution would clarify the meaning of ‘people,’ ‘person’ or ‘citizen,’ defining them not as “corporations, limited liability companies, or other corporate entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state,” but as individual human beings. The amendment would also subject corporate entities to “such regulation as the people, through their elected State and Federal representatives, deem reasonable and are otherwise consistent with the powers of Congress and the States under this Constitution.”