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A watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., filed a complaint accusing former President Donald Trump of violating "soft money" laws ahead of his potential reelection campaign.
The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) on Monday filed their complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and claim that the former president has poured money from his Save America leadership political action committee (PAC) into the Make America Great Again super PAC, with the intention of using the funds on his 2024 presidential run.
Receipts from the FEC show that Save America made a $20 million contribution to MAGA in early October. MAGA spent over $11 million supporting Republican candidates during the midterm elections, reported Reuters, and currently has $23 million in cash on hand as of October 19.
The CLC is alleging that Trump transferred the "soft money" contribution—or money that isn't subject to federal contribution limits, source prohibitions and reporting requirements—to be used toward midterms and eventually his own campaign while being a federal candidate for 2024. Under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act passed by Congress in 2002, federal candidates are barred from spending "soft money," either directly or indirectly, on a federal election.
"Trump's public statements show that by early 2022, he had decided to run for president and was simply delaying announcing that decision to avoid the campaign finance rules applicable to federal candidates," Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform for the CLC, said in a Monday release.
Trump has yet to formally announce his bid for the 2024 election, but the former president has continued to hint to supporters that the announcement is forthcoming. One of his former advisers said last week that news will drop tomorrow at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, where he promised to make a "major announcement."
Trump has not made any public comments on the complaint from the CLC, but did write on his Truth Social account Monday that "Hopefully, tomorrow will turn out to be one of the most important days in the history of our Country!"
The CLC is urging the FEC in its complaint to conduct an "immediate investigation" into the $20 million contribution from Save America, a PAC that the legal group argues Trump "directly or indirectly established, financed, maintained or controlled."
"When federal candidates evade campaign finance laws by spending soft money to influence federal elections, our election system — and the values of transparency, accountability, and anticorruption that it relies on — are undermined," Ghosh added in the release.
An FEC spokesperson told Reuters that the commission does not comment on litigation.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's team for comment.
About the writer
Kaitlin Lewis is a Newsweek reporter on the Night Team based in Boston, Massachusetts. Her focus is reporting on national ... Read more