A Democrat super PAC is filing a formal complaint against former President Donald Trump with the Federal Election Commission.
The group, American Bridge, alleges that Trump is violating campaign finance law by using political funds for a presidential campaign without formally declaring that he is a candidate.
The New York Times reports that “the complaint uses Mr. Trump’s own words about a 2024 run — ‘I know what I’m going to do, but we’re not supposed to be talking about it yet from the standpoint of campaign finance laws,’ he said in the fall — to accuse him of improperly using his existing political committees to advance a presidential run.”
The law requires that anyone who spends or raises more than $5,000 on a presidential campaign must register with the FEC — something that Trump has not done at this point.
The PAC also pointed to Trump’s claims at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month where he said, “We did it twice and we’ll do it again,” about winning the presidential election.
“He should have to adhere to the law in a way that all other candidates do,” Jessica Floyd, the president of American Bridge, told the Times. “When he says ‘I’m going to do it a third time,’ that’s not flirting. That’s more than a toe dip.”
“It’s not like he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” she added.
By registering as a candidate, Trump would face restrictions on how he can spend his committee’s political war chests, which the Times notes “entered 2022 with $122 million in the bank — far more than the Republican Party itself.”
Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Trump, told the newspaper that the complaint is “frivolous.”
“America is spiraling into disaster because of the Democrats’ failures, and instead of reversing course, they are busy filing frivolous complaints that have zero merit,” Budowich said.
Trump continued to tease a run during his rally in South Carolina on Saturday.
“In 2024 we are going to take back that beautiful, beautiful White House,” Trump said. “I wonder who will do that. I wonder. I wonder.”
The Times report noted that the complaint is unlikely to have much of an impact.
“The complaint would appear unlikely to generate any crackdown by the Federal Election Commission, which is equally divided between commissioners aligned with the Democratic and Republican parties, and often deadlocks on contentious matters. The watchdog agency’s investigations process is also notoriously slow. A complaint to the commission related to the pre-candidacy activities of Jeb Bush, who announced his run for president in 2015, was still in court as recently as December 2021,” the report concluded.
