Trump Hit With FEC Complaint For Illegal Fundraising From Foreign Nationals

Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:08 pm

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The Campaign Legal Center has filed an FEC complaint against Trump over the fundraising letters that his campaign has been sending to foreign nationals.

“Donald Trump should have known better,” said Paul S. Ryan, CLC deputy executive director. It is a no-brainer that it violates the law to send fundraising emails to members of a foreign government on their official foreign government email accounts, and yet, that’s exactly what Trump has done repeatedly. The FEC’s forum last week highlighted how foreign corporate money could infiltrate U.S. elections, but Trump’s fundraising antics show that the FEC must also monitor candidates directly soliciting foreign money.

“If the FEC fails to take action on our complaint, it could send a message that Trump and other candidates have the greenlight to fundraise overseas,” Ryan added.

“This is a strange and unique development that we have not seen before in campaign fundraising,” said Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer. “The FEC needs to investigate how many of these illegal solicitations were sent, to whom they were sent, whether any illegal foreign contributions have been received and, if so, whether the contributions have been returned.”

Trump’s campaign has claimed that the fundraising letters were accidental, but the email spam asking for cash has gotten so extreme that the UK Parliment has taken action to block Trump’s campaign from sending the fundraising emails to lawmakers.

Whether or not anything comes out of the complaint, the problem for Trump is that he has been running claiming that Hillary Clinton has taken money from foreign nationals via the Clinton Foundation. If Trump successfully raised any money from foreign nationals from his campaign, he will have turned his Clinton fantasy into a reality.

The complaint won’t be resolved before the General Election, but Trump just lost one of his key arguments against Hillary Clinton.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association