FEC Commissioner On Trump-Stormy Daniels Case: “Not A Campaign Finance Violation…Not A Reporting Violation Of Any Kind”
The case against Donald Trump is weak.
FEC Commissioner James E. Trainor rejected the idea that there was a violation of federal election law in the Stormy Daniels case.
He said District Attorney Alvin Bragg “is really trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole.”
The Washington Examiner reported:
A key member of the Federal Election Commission today rejected the Manhattan district attorney’s indictment of former President Donald Trump as a violation of federal election laws.
“It’s not a campaign finance violation. It’s not a reporting violation of any kind,” said FEC Commissioner James E. “Trey” Trainor.
In trying to stretch the law to make it look like a violation, he added, District Attorney Alvin Bragg “is really trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole.”
…
“I don’t know how you get around the evidence that both the Department of Justice in their investigation of the federal campaign finance issues and the Federal Election Commission in their ultimate jurisdiction over campaign finance issues, neither of them found there to be any violations whatsoever, and I think the jury is going to see that and they’re going to have to rely upon the fact that both the law enforcement experts and the civil enforcement experts, as far as campaign finance are concerned, didn’t find any violation of the law here,” said Trainor.
He pointed out that both the DOJ and FEC already considered the case and dropped it.
The Federal Election Commission dropped its investigation into the case in 2021.
The Federal Election Commission announced Thursday that it won’t proceed with a case examining whether former President Trump violated election law in 2016 a hush-money payment made through his then-lawyer Michael Cohen.
The state of play: The election commission, split between three Republicans and three Democratic-aligned commissioners, dropped the proceeding in a closed-door meeting in February, per the New York Times.
He explained the reasons the case was dropped in a letter he and FEC Commissioner Sean Cooksey wrote in 2021.
The first reason was that Michael Cohen had already taken a plea deal.
The next reasons were that the paperwork violation took place after 2016 which means it could not have been done to help with the 2016 election and that it isn’t obvious the payments were meant to influence the election.
They also stated that the statute of limitations for the case was running out anyway.
End the witch hunts!
