TIP OF THE ICEBERG’: It’s a particularly busy time for the Federal Election Commission to be out of commission.
FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub says the charges against two associates of President Trump’s personal lawyer for scheming to funnel foreign money to U.S. politicians are “just the tip of the iceberg.”
- “There may well be a lot of money that is slipping into our system that we just don’t know about,” Weintraub said in a Friday interview.
And the question of whether Trump acted inappropriately by pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate 2020 political rival Joe Biden is at the core of the House’s impeachment inquiry.
But the FEC is effectively paralyzed: The agency in charge of enforcing campaign finance laws has not been able to conduct any formal business since the departure of its Republican vice chair in August. It needs a quorum to function — and Trump has yet to appoint a fourth commissioner. Weintraub, a Democrat who has chaired the commission three times since her 2002 appointment by President George W. Bush, is very concerned — and says voters should be, too.
