A key FEC commissioner maintains that President Trump committed no campaign finance violations or filing violations
A sitting FEC commissioner now joins the scores of legal minds defending 45th President Donald Trump and noting the extreme fragility of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against the leading 2024 presidential candidate.
James E. “Trey” Trainor, described by the Washington Examiner in its reporting as a “key member of the Federal Elections Commission,” described Bragg’s indictment as a “stretch” and noted that the FEC previously considered whether to bring the case and instead tossed it.
“It’s not a campaign finance violation,” explained Trainor. “It’s not a reporting violation of any kind,” According to Trainor, Bragg “is really trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole.”
This week Trump was charged on a 34-count indictment that largely claimed he committed the crime of covering up another crime, despite the original crime being totally absent from the indictment. If found guilty by a jury in Democrat-dominated Manhattan, the former 76-year-old former president could face up to 136 years in prison.
Earlier, the elections professional appeared to have taken umbrage at the idea of campaign finance crimes being tried in a Manhattan court, instead of the FEC hearing room, in a post on Twitter.
Trainer, an election lawyer appointed to the office by Trump, told the outlet that Michael Cohen had already taken responsibility for the so-called “hush money” payments, the associated alleged paperwork violation came after Trump’s campaign concluded, and that a normal person would not understand the complexity of Bragg’s scheme.
“It has to be something that anybody on the street can look at and say the only reason you did that was to influence the campaign,” Trainor told the Washington Examiner. “There’s a lot of reasons that he could have done it that aren’t related to him being a candidate for president, and so therefore, it wouldn’t have met the standard as campaign expenditure under federal law.”
On the FEC website, Trainor is described as an experienced lawyer who practiced “in the areas of election law, campaign finance law, and ethics” over the last two decades. He was appointed by Trump and his term ends at the end of this month.
Trainer seems to be echoing the sentiments of top ranking members of the House GOP, many career lawyers prior to entering politics, who have promised to hold Bragg accountable for what conservatives overwhelmingly view as a gross misuse of power designed to interfere with Trump’s 2024 election.
On the day of Trump’s arrest, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy again promised that Congress would hold Bragg to account.
“Alvin Bragg is attempting to interfere in our democratic process by invoking federal law to bring politicized charges against President Trump, admittedly using federal funds, while at the same time arguing that the peoples’ representatives in Congress lack jurisdiction to investigate this farce,” McCarthy said. “Not so. Bragg’s weaponization of the federal justice process will be held accountable by Congress.”
Original Article: https://valiantnews.com/2023/04/fec-commissioner-trump-case-not-a-campaign-finance-violation-of-any-kind/
