A Democrat congressman acknowledged Tuesday that a “reasonable observer could interpret” a campaign finance statute posted by FEC Chairman Sean Cooksey “to imply that Vice President Harris may not be entitled” to President Biden’s war chest.
On Sunday, Cooksey posted language from a federal statute that reads, “If the candidate is not a candidate in the general election, all contributions made for the general election shall be either returned or refunded to the contributors or redesignated … or reattributed in accordance” with existing statutes “as appropriate.” Following President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, the Biden campaign recently transferred $91.5 million in campaign funds to his vice president, Kamala Harris. Biden’s team “renamed three of its fundraising entities” and “plac[ed] them in Harris’s name,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
In a Tuesday letter to the FEC, New York Rep. Joseph Morelle admitted that “a reasonable observer could interpret [Cooksey’s] post” — which was simply a verbatim quote from a federal campaign finance statute — “to imply that Vice President Harris may not be entitled to the finances from a campaign for which she has been a named candidate for almost four years.”
Morelle worried that Cooksey’s “recent social media activity” might “sow misguided doubt and confusion about the state of the presidential election and the Commission’s partiality.”
The Trump campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Tuesday challenging the transfer of funds and reportedly calling it “the largest campaign finance violation in
