‘Honored Guests’: Democratic FEC Commissioners Attend DNC While Weighing Complaint Against Kamala’s Campaign

FEC is investigating Biden’s transfer of $91.5 million war chest to Kamala Harris

On July 23, the Trump campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission that could pull back the curtain on Democratic Party finances. Two days later, the Democratic National Committee offered the six commissioners “honored guest” invitations to attend its convention in Chicago—and two of them accepted.

Democratic commissioners Ellen Weintraub and Shana Broussard will attend the convention, which kicks off Monday, according to internal FEC documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The three Republicans on the commission and a third Democrat declined the invitation, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The FEC commissioners’ participation in the convention is raising conflict-of-interest concerns as the commission investigates a complaint filed by Donald Trump’s campaign over the transfer of Joe Biden’s $91.5 million war chest to Kamala Harris.

“I think any reasonable person would look at this as concerning at best, and improper at worst,” said Jessica Furst Johnson, a partner at the law firm Holtzman Vogel and former general counsel to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “With a complaint currently before the Commission as to whether Kamala Harris can lawfully accept millions and millions of dollars in campaign funds that were contributed to elect Joe Biden as President, how can [commissioners] be objective?”

Trump campaign lawyer David Warrington, in a July 23 complaint to the FEC, called the transfer a “brazen money grab” that constitutes the “biggest violation in the history of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971,” the landmark law that regulates most political campaign spending.

DNC chairman Jaime Harrison and convention chairwoman Minyon Moore extended the invitation to commissioners on July 25, according to a letter obtained by the Free Beacon. They offered each commissioner two “Honored Guest Credentials” for each night of the convention, as well as lodging at the Marriott Marquis, a four-star hotel the DNC is using as its hotel headquarters. Democratic donors are paying $100,000 for a sponsorship package similar to the one offered to the commissioners.

Federal prosecutors in 2014 accused Moore, a longtime Democratic operative, of running an illegal shadow finance operation for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.

An FEC spokeswoman said that the DNC is not covering expenses for Weintraub and Broussard to attend the convention and that the commissioners are not staying at the Marriott Marquis. The spokeswoman did not address whether the commissioners accepted the DNC’s offer of “Honored Guest Credentials,” which grants credential holders access to an “Honored Guest Super Suite” at the convention.

“Vice Chair Weintraub and Commissioner Broussard sought and are complying with guidance received from the FEC’s Ethics Office, as is customary when Commissioners travel,” a spokeswoman said.

The DNC did not respond to a request for comment.

Commissioners have come under scrutiny before for attending party conventions. “You’re asking people from the parties to run a commission whose job is to be tough on the parties and their candidates, and that’s inherently problematic,” government watchdog Bill Allison told the Associated Press in 2004, after commissioners from both parties attended the Democratic and Republican conventions.

The Republican National Committee did not invite any commissioners to its convention last month, two sources familiar with the matter told the Free Beacon.

It’s not the first time Weintraub, a commissioner since 2002, has faced ethics questions. Republicans accused her in 2017 and 2019 of violating the commission’s code of ethics by making derogatory statements about Trump while she oversaw enforcement cases involving the then-president. And she has faced scrutiny for taking dozens of foreign-funded junkets over her career, even as she complained about “foreign influence” in the American political process.

Weintraub billed herself as an ethics reformer early in her stint at the FEC. In 2003, when she served as chairwoman of the commission, one of her first acts was to update the FEC’s ethics code to regulate commissioners’ political activities.

“It might cause people to question our impartiality,” she said at the time.