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- Lawyers for a Jeb-linked PAC accused the Trump campaign of accepting illegal corporate contributions in 2015.
- After almost 6 years, the FEC closed the file after the statute of limitations expired.
- The matter began when a Trump Organization lawyer sent cease and desist letters to Trump critics.
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Last month, the Federal Election Commission closed the file on a complaint filed in 2015 by a Jeb Bush-linked PAC that accused the Trump campaign of accepting illegal in-kind corporate contributions.
The commission deadlocked 3-3 on ideological lines over whether to dismiss the allegations outright, but ultimately voted unanimously to close the file, putting the matter to rest nearly 6 years after Bush's PAC filed the initial complaint.
In an August 25th statement, the commission's two Democratic members, Shana Broussard and Ellen Weintraub, said that they believe the Trump campaign did in fact break the law, but explained that the commission was "ultimately left with no meaningful enforcement options" regarding the complaint after the 5-year statute of limitations expired.
They also said the years-long delay was due to both the loss of a quorum on the commission that lasted from August 2019 to December 2020 as well as the fact that the complaint "involved legal and factual issues that potentially overlapped with pending criminal and congressional investigations," alluding to the involvement of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.
The saga first began on December 4, 2015, when a lawyer for the Trump Organization sent a cease and desist letter to Right to Rise PAC — a so-called "leadership PAC" affiliated with Jeb Bush designed to let the former Florida governor raise money on behalf of other candidates and campaigns.
The Trump Organization, which sent similar letters to other groups, was threatening to take "immediate legal action" if the PAC ran ads containing "false, misleading, defamatory, inaccurate or otherwise tortious statements" about then-candidate Donald Trump or his brand.
But the Trump Organization screwed up, sending the letter to a different but related PAC, Right to Rise USA, a super-PAC backing Bush that had already begun airing negative ads against Trump.
In response, lawyers from the PAC that had been wrongly targeted by the Trump campaign filed a complaint 5 days later with the FEC alleging that Trump had broken campaign finance law by using his corporation's legal team for campaign purposes, which is essentially an illegal corporate contribution.
"Just as your client is attempting to quickly learn the basics of foreign policy, we wish you personally the best in your attempts to learn election law," read a particularly sassy letter by the lawyers attached to the FEC complaint.
A month later, the Bush-linked PAC's lawyers filed an addendum to the complaint to include Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, accusing him of illegally acting as a campaign employee while employed as executive vice president and senior counsel at the Trump Organization. Because of Cohen's ensuing legal troubles, the commission was unable to act on the matter until after the statute of limitations had already expired.