“Tuesday evening the Committee to Defend the President (CDP) filed a motion in a D.C. federal court seeking to supplement the complaint it had filed against the Federal Election Committee (FEC) in April 2018. In its original complaint, the CDP alleged that the agency responsible for enforcing campaign-finance law failed to act on an administrative complaint the CDP had filed with the FEC. That complaint charged that, during the 2016 presidential election, Democrats illegally funneled approximately $84 million through the Hillary Victory Fund to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which then illegally coordinated with the Hillary Clinton campaign.
(…) In last night’s filing, the CDP tells the district court that its request to supplement its complaint will not affect the court’s consideration of the question of standing. Rather, the CDP merely seeks to update its allegations concerning the FEC’s delay, to “allege that, for more than a year, the FEC has completely failed to complete its adjudication of, or even make a ‘reason to believe’ finding concerning CDP’s Administrative Complaint.”
In briefing filed with its motion to supplement the complaint, the CDP stresses that “in determining whether the FEC’s delay in addressing the Administrative Complaint is ‘unlawful,’ one of the most important factors this Court must consider is the length of time it has been pending before the agency.” Thus, the CDP argues, “in determining whether the FEC’s ‘failure to act is contrary to law,’ the pertinent time period should now be over one year, rather than four months,” and the court should allow it to update the complaint accordingly.
Whether the district court will agree is another matter: The court might well conclude that there is no need to update the complaint merely to state that more time has passed since its filing. It is equally plausible, though, that the court will allow the supplemental filing as innocuous. The FEC ultimately consent the filing of the supplemental complaint.
Dan Backer (Credit: DB Capitol Strategies)
These procedural machinations, however, serve solely as a sideshow to the real news: The FEC is not doing its job. That is likely what prompted Dan Backer, the D.C.-based attorney representing the CDP, to push for supplementing the complaint—to expose the FEC’s inexcusable inaction.
“It’s outrageous that the FEC has sat around and done nothing – especially with such a detailed, comprehensive paper trail handed to them,” Backer told The Federalist. “It smacks of the same Deep State culture that shielded April Sand,” he said, in reference to the former FEC attorney “who played politics on the job,” by among other things “participat[ing] in a Huffington Post Live internet broadcast via webcam from an FEC facility, criticizing the Republican Party and then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney.” But Sand escaped criminal prosecution for violating the Hatch Act when the “Federal Election Commission recycled her hard drive before evidence could be recovered.”
Now for more than a year, the FEC has ignored its statutory duty to address the CDP’s administrative complaint that laid out solid evidence that during the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, the DNC, and the state Democratic parties illegally laundered nearly $84 million in campaign contributions. “But they also don’t want anyone doing the job they refuse to do,” Backer said in reference to the FEC’s motion to dismiss the CPF’s lawsuit.” (Read more: The Federalist, 2/13/2019)