Flustered FEC Democrats link Trump campaign to Watergate

Bitter Federal Election Commission Democrats this week expressed outrage that Republican commissioners didn’t agree to investigate former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign spending, calling it the “unmistakable stench of partisanship.”

In a five-page memo, Commissioners Ellen Weintraub and Shana Broussard accused the three GOP commissioners of running block for Trump and said their actions are undermining the reason the agency exists.

Among other attacks, the duo ripped the Republicans for refusing to believe anonymous news sources in major newspaper stories cited in a complaint that the campaign allegedly trafficked millions of dollars through shell companies to the former president’s family and friends.

“This agency might not exist were it not for some exceptional reporting relying on an anonymous source then known to the public only as ‘Deep Throat,’” they wrote, referencing the Watergate scandal that turned 50 this year.

“It is ironic, ahistorical, arbitrary, and capricious for commissioners to refuse to consider information derived from analogous sources,” Weintraub and Broussard added.

In a typically secret vote, the six FEC members voted 3-3 against moving further to investigate the Trump campaign spending charges leveled by the Campaign Legal Center in 2020. The group had alleged that millions of dollars were improperly reported in violation of FEC rules.

But while odd to those who aren’t campaign experts, the spending and reporting by the Trump campaign were very similar to those of past presidential campaigns, the three Republicans said in their own memo issued a week ago when the vote was made public.

At issue were the millions delivered to two firms set up by Trump allies, Parscale Strategy and American Made Media Consultants. Among the allegations was that the campaign funneled money through the two firms to friends and family, including the president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancee.

The complaint said the two were on the campaign staff but were actually working for contractors. Republican Commissioners Sean Cooksey and James “Trey” Trainor and Chairman Allen Dickerson said it appeared to be a standard campaign template.

“This is consistent with the longstanding practice whereby presidential campaigns contract with vendors to coordinate suites of services including media consulting. The commission has explicitly acknowledged this practice,” they wrote.

In their review of the case, Weintraub and Broussard said the tie vote to stop action in the case “carries the unmistakable stench of partisanship.” They added, “Their failure to fairly enforce the law runs directly counter to the agency’s mission: The FEC’s Republican commissioners are damaging, rather than protecting, the integrity of America’s campaign-finance process.”

They attempted to compare the complaint to one that recently led to a $113,000 fine against the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign for wrongly identifying spending for the scandalous “dossier” against Trump.

Especially for Weintraub, it was the latest frustration in her efforts to punish Trump. Her social media is full of criticisms of the former president and their note claimed that GOP commissioners were in the former president’s pocket.

Consider how they opened their analysis of the case:

“The former president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, is on a remarkable win streak before this commission. Since the 2016 election cycle, the FEC has received more than 40 complaints involving Donald Trump or his committee. The Commission’s nonpartisan attorneys have recommended we find reason to believe Trump, his committee, or his family members violated the federal election laws alleged in at least 24 of those complaints. But we have investigated a grand total of zero of those allegations. Zero. At every turn, Republican FEC commissioners have voted to block the pursuit of these matters.”