Tag Archives: FEC

FEC chair lays it on the line

Donald Trump keeps making specious allegations about voter fraud.

The head of the Federal Elections Commission, Ellen Weintraub, has heard enough from the president of the United States. She wants him to either put up or shut the hell up about allegations of fraud in our nation’s elections.

She wrote the president a letter that includes this: “What I wrote to you in March 2017 is just as true now: Our democracy depends on the American people’s faith in our elections. Your voter-fraud allegations run the risk of undermining that faith,” Weintraub wrote. “Just as seriously, baseless allegations of fraud have been used to rationalize indefensible laws that deter certain U.S. citizens from exercising their right to vote. Words matter, and facts matter.”

Trump alleges vote fraud in N.H.

She wants Trump to produce any evidence of what he has alleged.

Don’t hold your breath, Mme. FEC Chair. It ain’t gonna happen. Nor will the president ever acknowledge that he stepped in it bigly. 

If only he would. If only he could curb his crass instincts. If only the president of the United States, our commander in chief/head of state/leader of the free world would appreciate the dignity that goes with holding the office he now occupies.

None of that will happen, either.

Which is why — among a multitude of other reasons — he needs to be defeated for re-election.

FEC boss says, ‘Wait, Mr. POTUS; that’s illegal!’

Donald Trump has said openly and in front of the whole world that he would “look at” negative information about a political opponent that came to him from a foreign nation, even a foreign government.

Except …

The head of the U.S. Federal Election Commission, Ellen Weintraub, has declared with equal vigor that accepting such assistance is illegal … and unconstitutional.

As The Hill reported: Doubling down on why that’s unconstitutional, Weintraub said “this is not a novel concept,” adding that “our Founding Fathers sounded the alarm about ‘foreign Interference, Intrigue and Influence.'”

Great mother of God in heaven. What in the world is careening around in the vacuous skull of the president of the United States?

He has signaled to the entire world that he would possibly accept such foreign assistance, that he wouldn’t necessarily inform the FBI, despite what the FBI director, Christopher Wray, has said what the president should do, which is tell the FBI.

Weintraub said via Twitter: “Let me make something 100 percent clear to the American public and anyone running for public office: It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election.”

I shall add that Weintraub isn’t some shmuck political hack. She holds degrees from Yale and Harvard Law School. Let me be clear: She knows of which she speaks.

Donald Trump is posing, as former VP Joe Biden said, “an existential threat” to our system of government, our values, our way of life, our political norms.

Astonishingly, the president’s own reckless and feckless mouth has delivered that danger to our doorstep.

FEC to Trump: Show us the proof of fraud

A federal elections commissioner has called Donald J. Trump’s bluff.

Good for her!

The challenge has come from Ellen Weintraub, a commissioner from New Hampshire, who is demanding that the president of the United States provide proof of allegations he has made about “widespread voter fraud” in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has said “millions” of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton, resulting in her hefty popular vote margin over the actual “winner” of the presidential election.

In so doing, Trump has impugned the integrity of the U.S. electoral process, not to mention that of state and local elections officials throughout the nation.

He hasn’t produced a shred, a scintilla, a scant hint of evidence to back up what he has alleged.

It’s time for Trump to produce the goods. Weintraub said Trump has in effect accused elections officials of committing “thousands” of felony crimes.

According to The Hill: “The President has issued an extraordinarily serious and specific charge,” added Weintraub, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush. “Allegations of this magnitude cannot be ignored. I therefore call upon President Trump to immediately share his evidence with the public and with the appropriate law-enforcement authorities so that his allegations may be investigated promptly and thoroughly.”

Well, Mr. President? Play your hand, sir.

Yet another hard lesson for Trump: money

campaign-finance-leftover-money

Donald J. Trump’s campaign for the presidency seems to be officially in peril, as in serious peril.

It’s not the presumptive Republican nominee’s big mouth, by itself, that has gotten him into trouble.

Nor is it the man’s apparently shoddy management style that has cast a pall over his bid to become president.

It’s money, man.

Or, the lack of it.

Why is this an exceptionally big deal? Well, it has to do with the mouthiness of the nominee-to-be and his constant boasting from the campaign stump about how rich he has become. He keeps yapping about the vast wealth he has acquired. Trump keeps trumpeting the “success” of his enormous business empire, which he says will enable him to “self-fund” his presidential campaign.

Hmmm. Did someone call him a “fraud”? Wasn’t it one or more of his former Republican presidential primary opponents who hung that label on him?

The latest Federal Elections Commission filings reveal that Trump’s presidential campaign is virtually broke.

No worries, Trump tells us. In the words of Al Pacino’s character, Col Frank Slade, in “Scent of a Woman,” he is “just getting wahrmed up!”

Maybe. Then again, perhaps the “fraud” label has stuck.

Is he as rich as he says? Is he really and truly able to self-fund this campaign? His tax returns might tell us.

Oh, wait …