What's new: The FEC is clearing out a backlog of Trump-related cases. One of them, officially tossed last month, shows how the nation's top political money regulator has been hobbled.
- The case stemmed from a December 2015 complaint lodged by a pro-Jeb Bush super PAC.
- It alleged that a pair of Trump Organization employees, Michael Cohen and Alan Garten, had illegally used corporate resources to support Trump's presidential campaign.
- "The record supports these allegations," declared two of the FEC's Democratic commissioners in a statement on Wednesday.
Both of those commissioners, and their four colleagues, nonetheless voted to dismiss the case.
- It wasn't for lack of evidence. Separate criminal investigations, including Robert Mueller's election-meddling probe, provided ample evidence that Trump effectively took illegal corporate contributions by enlisting Cohen and Garten in his presidential campaign.
- But the FEC had to wait for those separate investigations to end before taking its own enforcement action.
- When that finally concluded, the FEC had just three commissioners — one short of the quorum necessary to take any enforcement action.
- By the time a quorum was restored and the FEC actually took up the case, the five-year statute of limitations had run out.
What they're saying: "The commission found itself in the middle of a perfect storm of unique and unfortunate circumstances that prevented it from moving forward in this case," the two Democratic commissioners, Ellen Weintraub and Shana Broussard, wrote this week.
- "[A]t the time the commission was finally able to consider and vote on this matter, we were ultimately left with no meaningful enforcement options."
