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'This Isn't It': FEC Chair Refuses Firing Attempt by Trump, Calling It Illegal
"I've been lucky to serve the American people and stir up some good trouble along the way. That's not changing anytime soon," Commissioner Ellen Weintraub wrote.
Feb 07, 2025
Federal Elections Commission Commissioner and Chair Ellen Weintraub said Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump moved to fire her from the commission, but indicated she won't comply and called the directive legally invalid.
Weintraub shared a letter on X that read: "You are hereby removed as a member of the Federal Election Commission, effective immediately. Thank you for your service on the Commission," and appears to have Trump's signature below it. The letter is dated January 31, but in her accompanying post Weintraub said that she received the letter on Thursday.
"There's a legal way to replace FEC commissioners—this isn't it. I've been lucky to serve the American people and stir up some good trouble along the way. That's not changing anytime soon," wrote Weintraub, who has served as a commissioner at the independent regulatory agency that enforces federal campaign finance law since 2002. She was elected to chair the commission for 2025.
The FEC is headed by six commissioners and the body must have at least four in order to have a quorum. FEC commissioners are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and the Federal Election Campaign Act establishes six-year terms for commission members. However, commissioners can continue in their positions after those terms end in "holdover" status until the president nominates and the Senate confirms a replacement commissioner, according to the Congressional Research Service.
This is the case with Weintraub, who's term expired in 2007, and has remained on since in holdover status. Weintraub has also been the chief strategist behind a maneuver from the Democratic commissioners to force more deadlock on the commission in order to compel federal courts to step in and police federal election law, according to The New York Times.
"In the entire history of the bipartisan FEC no president has ever removed a commissioner from the opposing party without nominating a successor recommended by that party's leaders in Congress," wrote Daniel Weiner, the director of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center policy institute. "This is an extraordinary break from that history, and there are strong arguments that it violates long-established federal law governing independent agencies."
Trevor Potter, Republican former chair of the FEC and the current president of Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement Thursday that Congress intentionally did not grant the president powers to remove FEC commissioners.
"With multiple FEC commissioners serving on expired terms and one vacant seat, Trump is free to nominate multiple new commissioners and to allow Congress to perform its constitutional role of advice and consent," he wrote.
He added: "It's contrary to law that he has instead opted to claim to 'fire' a single Democratic commissioner who has been an outspoken critic of the president's lawbreaking and of the FEC's failure to hold him accountable."
In 2020, Weintraub authored a long social media thread aimed at debunking some of Trump's claims around alleged vote-by-mail voter fraud.
Weintraub also told The New York Times that she thinks her public statements regarding FEC complaints focused on Trump's presidential campaigns may be why she's in the president's crosshairs.
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'Truly Disturbing': FEC Republicans Vote Unanimously to Give Even More Shadow to 'Dark Money'
"Preventing the disclosure of the sources of political spending would deprive voters of critical information and undermine the essential need for checks on monetary power," warned one democracy watchdog.
May 17, 2024
All three Republican members of the Federal Election Commission on Thursday voted in favor of a new rule change that would have made it even easier for right-wing megadonors to hide their political campaign contributions from public view.
While the three Democratic members forced a deadlocked vote that prevented passage of the proposal, pro-democracy watchdogs said the unanimous vote by the Republican-appointed members shows the powerful commitment by GOP forces to increase the ability for wealthy individuals and corporate interests to mask their political giving.
FEC chairman Sean Cooksey was joined by his two Republican colleagues Allen Dickerson and James "Trey" Trainor III in backing the measure, but all three Democrats—Commissioners Shana Broussard, Dara Lindenbaum, and vice chair Ellen Weintraub—voted against to nullify it.
The proposal, Sludge reported earlier this week, would "supercharge" the flow of so-called "dark money" in political campaigns and was proposed by Dickerson, a Trump-nominated member who "previously worked at an anti-campaign finance regulation organization funded by conservative political megadonors."
"As democracy faces its biggest test yet around the world, it is difficult to believe that the world's oldest democracy is even considering further eroding the public's right to know who is influencing their elections."
Dickerson's proposed rule change, per the FEC, would have allowed advocacy groups or campaigns to "withhold, redact, or modify contributors’ identifying information in campaign finance disclosure reports"—reports currently mandated so that the public is made aware of who is funding such organizations.
Ahead of the vote, Scott Greytak, director of advocacy for Transparency International U.S., said the implications if it passed would reach far beyond the United States.
"With half of the world's population living in countries that will hold a nationwide vote this year, the United States must embody and exemplify the importance of transparent and informed elections," Greytak said in a statement opposing the proposal. "As democracy faces its biggest test yet around the world, it is difficult to believe that the world's oldest democracy is even considering further eroding the public's right to know who is influencing their elections."
In a May 2 memo detailing his argument in favor of exempting donors from mandated disclosure requirements, Dickerson claims it is "a Constitutional right" because "Americans are entitled to make political contributions without being attacked, threatened, or fired."
In view of such arguments, which right-wing forces have made for some time, Stuart McPhail, director of campaign finance litigation with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), has explained why such bad-faith misdirection is an effort to obscure what's really going on.
While it's true that some groups historically were granted exemptions for donor disclosures—including the NAACP and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), whose supporters and members faced coordinated, state-sponsored violence due to their political activities—claims like the one Dickerson makes, McPhail contends, fails on various merits.
"Campaign finance disclosure does not subject any viewpoint to discriminatory burdens," McPhail explained in a 2022 blog post. "Rather, the aim of the laws has nothing to do with expression at all: they target transfers of wealth that could be and are used to corruptly influence officials, defraud voters and undermine democracy. Rather than state-sponsored suppression, dark money funders face criticism from concerned and less powerful citizens."
It should be clear, he continued, that powerful "Dark money groups, their donors, and the candidates are trying to evade responsibility, not prevent retaliation." When people like Dickerson make such moves, argued McPhail, they are trying to help groups and their allies "to avoid accountability by hiding their donors and silencing critics who may speak out against them."
This is why Thursday's votes in favor of such a proposal, said Craig Holman, Ph.D., a government ethics expert with Public Citizen, should be viewed with alarm.
"Commissioners of the FEC, regardless of party affiliation, have always defended the need for disclosure of campaign money sources – until now," Holman said following the 3-3 vote. "Preventing the disclosure of the sources of political spending would deprive voters of critical information and undermine the essential need for checks on monetary power. It is truly disturbing to see half of the Commission now undermining that core principle, which is so important to an open democratic society."
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FCC Announces New Rule to Confront Deepfake Robocalls
While welcoming the rule, one advocate said it is "not enough to safeguard citizens and our elections."
Feb 08, 2024
Just over two weeks after New Hampshire voters were inundated with artificial intelligence-generation robocalls featuring U.S. President Joe Biden's fake voice telling them not to vote in their state's primary, the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday announced what one adocate called a "desperately needed" rule declaring such calls are illegal under federal law.
The FCC unanimously voted to adopt the declaratory ruling, saying calls like those made in New Hampshire are "artificial" under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).
The new rule goes into effect immediately, prohibiting people or groups from using voice cloning technology to create robocalls and giving state attorneys general civil enforcement authority.
According to the FCC, under the TCPA, the commission can also "take steps to block calls from telephone carriers facilitating illegal robocalls" and individual consumers or groups can bring a lawsuit against robocallers in court.
On Tuesday, the New Hampshire Department of Justice announced it had traced the robocalls from last month to a company called Life Corporation in Texas. The company made up to 25,000 of the calls.
Ishan Mehta, media and democracy program director for Common Cause, said the calls in New Hampshire last month represented "only the tip of the iceberg" and warned that "it is critically important that the FCC now use this authority to fine violators and block the telephone companies that carry the calls."
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said that "bad actors are using AI-generated voices in unsolicited robocalls to extort vulnerable family members, imitate celebrities, and misinform voters. We're putting the fraudsters behind these robocalls on notice."
Robert Weissman, president of consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said the rule will "meaningfully protect consumers from rapidly spreading AI scams and deception" and urged other federal agencies "follow suit and apply the tools and laws at their disposal to regulate AI."
"We need Congress to prohibit bad actors from using deceptive AI to disrupt our elections. The FEC, too, must clarify regulatory language to ban the use of deliberately deceptive AI in campaign communications."
The TCPA, however, is "not enough to safeguard citizens and our elections" from the larger threat of deepfakes and AI, warned Weissman.
"The Telephone Consumer Protection Act applies only in limited measure to election-related calls," he said. "The act's prohibition on use of 'an artificial or prerecorded voice' generally does not apply to noncommercial calls and nonprofits. So the FCC's new rule will not cure the problem of AI voice-generated calls related to elections."
Public Citizen has repeatedly demanded that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) promptly regulate deepfake images and videos, which have already been used in campaign materials by former President Donald Trump, who is running for the Republican nomination.
Last month, the FEC said a decision on deepfakes is likely several months away.
On Thursday, Nick Penniman, founder of CEO of political reform group Issue One, called the FCC's decision "a positive step" that is "not enough."
"The unregulated use of AI as a means to target, manipulate, and deceive voters is an existential threat to democracy and the integrity of our elections. This is not a future possibility, but a present reality that demands decisive action," said Penniman. "We need Congress to prohibit bad actors from using deceptive AI to disrupt our elections. The FEC, too, must clarify regulatory language to ban the use of deliberately deceptive AI in campaign communications."
"These guardrails are vital to ensure we have the necessary tools to effectively counter this growing threat," he added, "and protect our elections."
Mehta called on Congress to pass the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act, which would prohibit the distribution of deceptive AI-generated audio, images, or video relating to federal candidates in political ads.
"We hope that both the House and the Senate will follow the example of the FCC," said Mehta, "whose Democratic and Republican commissioners recognized the threat posed by AI and came together in a unanimous vote to outlaw robocalls utilizing AI voice-cloning tools."
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