Trump Hit With MAJOR FEC Complaint Right Before Presidential Announcement

The Campaign Legal Center filed a formal complaint against Donald Trump with the Federal Elections Commission the day before his "big announcement," alleging that the former candidate broke the law by funneling $20 million from his Save America PAC to his MAGA Inc Super PAC. There are some loopholes that could make this legal, but the group that filed the complaint thinks they can argue that those don't apply in this case. Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

So right before Donald Trump made his grand announcement that everybody saw coming from a mile away that he was running for president again, he was hit with a massive FEC complaint from the campaign legal center, arguing that he illegally funneled 20 million from his Save America Political Action Committee to his Make America Great again, incorporated Super pac. Now, we have talked about this transfer of cash in the past because yes, it's certainly raised a hell of a lot of eyebrows because here's the thing, Donald Trump made the MAGA Incorporated super PAC because that's the kind of pack that can give money to the person who owns it. If they're running for office, his Save America pack, the one that raised more than a hundred million dollars that can't do that. He can give money to other candidates, but he can't spend it on himself. So what he did was he took 20 million out of that, put it in the one he can spend on himself, and the campaign legal center says, Uhuh, that is 100% illegal because you were running for president long before that Tuesday announcement.

So this is a bit of a, you know, murky area with campaign finance law. So let me just explain the Campaign Legal Center's complaint, they're arguing that because this is a soft money to essentially dark money, I guess, campaign transfer by a federal candidate, and that is the key here. That is illegal because that person raised the money through one pack, funneled it to the other so that they could spend it on themselves, which only becomes a crime if that person is a federal candidate. At the time of the transfer, Trump didn't officially announce until after the complaint had been filed, which of course was about a month or so after the money had been transferred.

So technically Trump was not a candidate. So the Herculean task, now that the Campaign Legal Center has to prove, if the FEC does decide to take this complaint and move forward with it, the campaign legal center is going to have to argue, and I believe they've done a good job of it already, that Trump was already a candidate. There was no question that Donald Trump was a candidate. He has teased this out for months and months and months and months. Everybody knew Trump was running for president. The only difference is that he hadn't specifically said, I am running for president as of right now. So when does the person become a candidate?

When they're going out there and doing rallies and raising money for themselves when they go out there and talk about big things are gonna come, I promise you, trust me, that to me seems like that should officially be the candidate running for president. And that of course, is the argument that the campaign legal center now has to make. If the FEC looks at it and says, Nope, he didn't officially declare until Tuesday, therefore there is no legal problem, then guess what? We just opened up a great new loophole for a bunch of rich idiots to funnel money to from their packs to their super pacs to spend on their own campaigns. And at that point, nothing else matters because our campaigns can be bought and sold at a moment's notice. So there is a lot riding on this, the Campaign Legal Center. I've interviewed some folks from there in the past over at Ring of Fire. They're great folks. They're very brilliant legal minds. I hope they can pull this off, not just because of what it will do to Trump, but because of the impact it will have on some of those loopholes that allow for this unlimited campaign money to flow.