On Wednesday, the Committee on House Administration held the first formal oversight hearing of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in over a decade. Chairman Bryan Steil explained in his opening remarks:

Today marks the first time in twelve years the Federal Election Commission, or the FEC, has come before the Committee on House Administration.

As Chairman of this Committee, I’m focused on building Americans’ confidence in our elections by making it easy to vote and hard to cheat. . .

After his 2018 reelection campaign, Senator Ted Cruz filed a lawsuit challenging Section 304 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) which imposes a $250,000 limit on the amount of post-election contributions that a campaign may use to repay debt owed to the candidate when he or she lends money to his or her own campaign. On Monday, the Supreme Court delivered a victory to Senator Cruz, holding that:

Cruz and the Committee have standing to challenge the threatened enforcement of Section 304 of BCRA. We also conclude that this provision burdens core political speech without proper justification.

Last week, the Federal Election Commission fined the 2016 Clinton Campaign and the Democrat National Committee for inaccurate disclosures relating to the Steele Dossier. The New York Post reported:

The Federal Election Commission has fined both Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee for lying about how they spent money used to fund the now-debunked Steele dossier on former President Donald Trump.

The debunked and false Steele Dossier that Hillary Clinton’s lawyer, Marc Elias, paid for has resulted in a stunning rebuke from the bipartisan Federal Election Commission:

The Federal Election Commission has fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for lying about the funding of the infamous, and discredited, Russian “dossier” used in a smear attempt against Donald Trump weeks before he shocked the world with his 2016 presidential victory.

The election agency said that Clinton and the DNC violated strict rules on describing expenditures of payments funneled to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS through their law firm.

The Democrat Commissioners of Federal Election Commission (FEC) led by Commissioner Ellen Weintraub have introduced a new scheme that the Institute for Free Speech (Institute) has labeled as unethical and unconstitutional. The scheme attempts to delegate the enforcement of federal campaign finance laws to private parties, and does so by refusing to close case files and by refusing to allow prevailing parties to defend themselves when the Commission declines to investigate a claim.

Democrat commissioners on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) are showing us just how dangerous it would be if Democrat-backed election bills become law. As Kimberley Strassel explained in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Democrat Commissioner Ellen Weintraub is a case study for selective enforcement of FEC regulations.

In Tuesday’s New York Times, Shane Goldmacher reported on the latest tactic by Democrats on the Federal Election Commission to punish more Americans for exercising free speech rights: deadlock enforcement votes, conceal the agency action from the public, and then default the agency in federal court. The Democrat strategy entails concealing from federal courts that the agency has decided matters on the merits in order to mislead federal judges into thinking the agency has failed to act in a timely manner and thereby trick federal judges into authorizing private enforcement lawsuits by liberal activist groups against conservatives.

It's no secret that the Biden Administration and Democrat members of Congress are trying to radically change the Federal Election Commission and campaign finance law through the so-called "For the People Act" (see prior blogs here, here, and here), but the Biden Administration is making plans to change the dynamic of the FEC in the likely event that the legislation doesn't pass the Senate. In a memo obtained by Axios, the Biden Administration lays out its plan to sidestep Republican input on nominees to the body and make the FEC more "pro-enforcement." 

With H.R. 1 scheduled to come to the House floor the first week of March, it is important to revisit just how destructive this legislation, first introduced during the 116th Congress, would be for the U.S. election system. The Committee on House Administration Republicans have exposed H.R. 1 for what it is — "a partisan and massive congressional overreach designed to keep their Democrat majority by nationalizing our elections."

Earlier today, 9 former FEC Commissioners (including RNLA Board of Governors members Lee Goodman, Matthew Petersen, and Michael Toner) wrote to congressional leadership to express their concerns with Titles IV and VI of Division B of this Congress' version of the "For the People Act" (H.R. 1 and S. 1 respectively). These sections of the nearly 800-page bill dealing with the FEC directly and campaign finance would, as the former Commissioners put it, "complicate the law and hinder grassroots political speech and activism, with little or no benefit to public accountability, transparency, understanding of public policy, or reduction in corruption."