Free Republic

The Supreme Court sided with Senator Ted Cruz in a 6-3 decision issued Monday morning in a case brought against him by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) over how loans from candidates can be repaid following an election cycle. The decision was authored by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett while Justice Elena Kagan wrote the dissent and was joined in the minority by Justices Breyer and Sotomayor.Sen. Ted Cruz, who clerked on the Supreme Court, has won his case in FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate. The court ruled 6-3 that...

President Joe Biden has advised his White House aides to shift into campaign mode for the midterm elections, according to a report. The president privately asked his aides to start highlighting differences between his policies and those of the Republican Party, according to Axios, citing “people familiar with the conversations.” Biden himself has ratcheted up the political rhetoric, accusing Republicans of having a radical agenda that is out of touch with the middle class. Biden has focused his political attacks on Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, painting him as the leader of the...

Special Counsel John Durham on May 2 alerted the judge presiding over the case against a former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer of fines the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) paid after a federal body found probable cause that they violated election laws. Durham filed the Federal Election Commission (FEC) opinion and conciliation agreements that the campaign and the DNC entered into with the FEC along with paying the fines for what the FEC described as probable violations of laws governing the reporting of political entity disbursements. At issue is the Democrat entities’ ties to Fusion GPS, a...

Biden FEC nominee blamed ‘unreliable’ voting machines as she sued Georgia over Stacey Abrams losing election President Joe Biden’s pick for the Federal Election Commission, Dara Lindenbaum, is about as partisan as they get having represented Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ nonprofit that challenged the alleged unconstitutionality of the 2018 election. Lindenbaum is also representing Senator Raphael Warnock’s church in the lawsuit. The complaint ironically questioned the state’s use of “unreliable” electronic voting machines. The campaign finance attorney admittedly signed on to a federal legal complaint in November of 2018 on behalf of Abrams’s Fair Fight Action. Abrams has never...

The Federal Election Commission has fined Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign $8,000 and the Democratic National Committee $105,000 for obscuring their funding of the "Steele dossier," a 2016 opposition research report that sought to highlight alleged links between Donald Trump and Russia. The bipartisan election commission also dismissed a complaint against Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier that caused a firestorm of allegations and investigations that shook the early months of Trump's presidency. The campaign mislabeled Steele's work as "legal services" and "legal and compliance consulting" in campaign filings, the FEC concluded...... Steele's report concluded, based on anonymous sources, that...

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.

We reported earlier on some of the Biden connections to the Durham probe, including DNI John Ratcliffe confirming that Joe Biden had been told about the plan from the Clinton campaign to smear Donald Trump. But, there’s another intriguing piece of information that the Free Beacon just dropped — that in 2020, the Biden campaign also paid the same internet company being talked about concerning the Durham probe. The Biden campaign paid nearly $20,000 to a cybersecurity firm at the center of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. The campaign paid Neustar Information Services...

President Joe Biden is nominating a new commissioner to the Federal Election Commission, the nation's chief campaign finance watchdog. The White House announced on Friday that Biden was putting forward Dara Lindenbaum, a campaign finance attorney, to join the six-member board governing the agency, which is charged with enforcing campaign finance laws and issuing opinions guiding federal officeseekers. Lindenbaum, according to her bio on her law firm's website, was general counsel to Stacey Abrams' 2018 Georgia gubernatorial run and deputy general counsel for former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's 2016 presidential bid. If confirmed, she would replace longtime commissioner Steven Walther,...

When news broke a few days ago that his Department of Justice was negotiating a deal to pay some illegal immigrants $450,000 in damages, President Biden declared the news "garbage." Now that he has had time to confer with his advisors, he has pronounced himself "perfectly comfortable" with the idea. Press Secretary Jen Psaki explained that "when the President was informed of the very real suffering endured by these people—trekking hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of miles to get to the United States—he immediately saw the justice behind the demanded payments. The United States advertises itself as the 'land...

The Federal Election Commission has ruled foreign donors can finance U.S. referendum campaigns, opening the door to foreign spending on fights over high-profile policy issues, Axios has learned. Why it matters: Foreign nationals are barred from donating to U.S. political candidates or committees. But the FEC's decision — allowing them to support ballot committees — provides another avenue for foreigners to directly influence U.S. voters and domestic policy. A major question stemming from the decision is whether foreign nationals are now permitted to spend money to influence the actual mechanisms of the U.S. democratic process. That would include congressional redistricting,...

The Federal Election Commission has dismissed Republican accusations that Twitter violated election laws in October by blocking people from posting links to an unsubstantiated New York Post article about Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son Hunter Biden, in a decision that is likely to set a precedent for future cases involving social media sites and federal campaigns. The F.E.C. determined that Twitter’s actions regarding the Hunter Biden article had been undertaken for a valid commercial reason, not a political purpose, and were thus allowable, according to a document outlining the decision obtained by The New York Times. The commission’s ruling, which...

According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Barbra Streisand has paid a large amount of political campaign contribution money (PCCM) over many years. On September 9, 2006, Barbra Streisand paid $1,000.00 to the "Committee to Elect Chris Murphy" organization. See a backup image of the payment here. The organization supported the U.S. House campaign of Chris Murphy. Mr. Murphy won the 2006 election, and later won election to the U.S. Senate, where he serves today. For the payment, Streisand used a mailing address — C/O Boulevard Management 21650 Oxnard St. Woodland Hills, CA 91367 — which we can easily find...

The Federal Elections Commission voted Thursday to close a probe of former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, saying it had not found any proof of any violations.On a 4-1 vote, the panel ended the investigation into hush money paid by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to porn star Stormy Daniels.The panel said it had failed to find that Mr. Trump or his campaign “knowingly and willfully” violated campaign-finance law when Mr. Cohen paid $130,000 in October 2016 to the adult actress whose real name is Stephanie Clifford and who says she had had an affair with the real-estate tycoon earlier...

“…and for other purposes” seems to be included in the titles of so many bills these days that it’s always enlightening to dig a little deeper, past a bill’s obvious provisions. In the case of H.R. 1 -- the 2021 Omnibus Federal Electoral Fraud Enhancement Act -- the revelations are pretty scary. They’re intended to drive from politics people Democrats don’t like and to consolidate in Congressional hands information that violates the Separation of Powers doctrine or the Bill of Rights. Others have spoken forcefully about the bill’s proposed unjust and ruinous changes to the Federal Election Commission, campaign finance...

The Trump campaign is bringing "legitimate accusations" to court through affidavits of credible witnesses and other evidence used in its challenges to electoral outcomes in various states, Federal Election Commission Chairman Trey Trainor said.Trainor said his review of evidence, including numerous affidavits claiming voter fraud and a sworn statement by a prominent mathematician flagging up to 100,000 Pennsylvania ballots, met first level of legal scrutiny under what's known as motion to dismiss or "Rule 12(b)(6)" of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which would dismiss less credible claims.Noting subsequent legal threshold beyond a "motion to dismiss" is the "summary judgment...

The Chief Electoral Officer of the Federal Election Commission made a Bombshell statement, saying that, from what he saw in Pennsylvania, and news that he had come from elsewhere in the world, this election was unconstitutional.It’s very explosive news. The Chief Electoral Officer, Trey Trainor, has stated that, in his expert view, “the referendum has not been open” and “this election is invalid.”He dropped the bomb on the liberal news media in Newsmax as he revealed that he claimed: “that there was election fraud in some areas.”There is no valid justification at all to refuse observers’ access to the...

The chairman of the Federal Election Commission Trey Trainor said on Friday voter fraud is taking place in states still counting ballots. During a Friday appearance on Newsmax TV’s “National Report,” Trainor said locations not granting observers access to watch the ballot counting process could be involved in voter fraud. Trainor told Newsmax what is obvious to anyone paying attention, “I do believe that there is voter fraud taking place in these places. Otherwise they would allow the observers to go in.”

Chair of the Federal Election Commission Trey Trainor believes voter fraud is taking place in states still counting ballots. During a Friday appearance on Newsmax TV’s “National Report,” Trainor said locations not granting observers access to watch the ballot counting process could be involved in voter fraud. “I do believe that there is voter fraud taking place in these places,” he said. “Otherwise they would allow the observers to go in.” Despite winning a court order, which allows the Trump campaign to send observers to watch ballot counting in Pennsylvania from six feet away, Trainor said ballot watchers “have not been...

Vice President Joe Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign has been ordered to pay a $219,000 penalty for improperly accepting a discounted private plane flight and taking individual campaign contributions above the legal limit, according to the Federal Election Commission. . .The audit showed that Biden’s campaign accepted an improper corporate contribution -- round-trip flights for three people between New Hampshire and Iowa on a private airplane in June 2007. The audit did not identify the three people. Biden’s campaign understated the value of the flights, reimbursing a company called GEH Air Transportation at too low a rate, according to the FEC...

Sen. Josh Hawley on Wednesday demanded that the Federal Election Commission investigate Twitter and Facebook for possibly violation campaign-finance law by censoring The Post’s reporting on emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop. The Missouri Republican wrote in a letter to the FEC that the social media giants’ “active suppression of public speech” regarding The Post’s article would appear to constitute a contribution to Joe Biden’s campaign under federal law. Federal law prohibits any corporation from making a contribution to a federal candidate for office.