Trump Accused Of Already Breaking Campaign Finance Laws For 2024

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Donald Trump has not "officially" declared that he is running for President in 2024, and because of that, he is allowed to spend his PAC money more freely without reporting. However, one group claims that his statements have made it clear that he IS running, and therefore he is already violating the rules related to his spending. This is a bit of a gray area in campaign finance law, and Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

According to a new complaint filed with the FEC by the political action committee, American Bridge 21st Century, Donald Trump is likely already violating campaign finance rules with his 2024 is he, or is he not, presidential bid. So here's what's happening and this is interesting, because it's something we've explained a little bit in the past. So let me just kind of rehash. The federal election commission allows for candidates to have what's called a testing the waters period. During that period, they can raise money, but because they haven't officially declared as a candidate yet they don't have to report it. They can spend over the limits. They can raise over the limits. They can pretty much do whatever the hell they want to do. But once they are officially running or it becomes clear to the FEC that they are running, even if they haven't officially declared, they then become subjected to all of the regular FEC rules, the spending limits, the reporting requirements and all of that.

And according to this complaint by American Bridge 21st Century, that's clearly what Trump is doing. All right, he's been doing this for months. This is no longer a testing the water period as this complaint explains. He's made it very clear. Hell, he talked about it a couple weeks ago when he said, we're going to do it again. He said, we beat 'em in 2016, we beat 'em in 2020 and we're going to do it again. Now that may not be filing out all the paperwork, but it is indeed a declaration that the man is running again. So yes, if the FEC wanted to take that as his official declaration, which they should, he would of course then be subjected to the again, spending limits and reporting requirements that he currently does not have to adhere to. And he's raising tons of money. He's spending tons of money, spending money on rallies, spending money at his own properties. He's spending money on his staff, all the things that ordinarily would have to be reported.

But he doesn't have to because he hasn't officially declared he's running for president, even though he has unofficially declared that he is running for president. So what's gonna happen if the FEC says, yes, Donald Trump is in fact running for president. So he has to start reporting. Well, the answer is nothing, right? They're not gonna actually punish him. Nobody ever gets punished for crap like this. It's, it's pointless to even have these rules in the first place, because again, nobody ever gets in trouble when they violate them. And that's the biggest part of the problem here. You know, I'm not saying in this particular instance, oh, I want Donald Trump to go down for this. It's not gonna happen. What I want is for the FEC to start enforcing these rules unilaterally across the board, fairly for every single individual. That's what needs to happen. But it's not going to happen. And as long as the FEC doesn't force Trump to say yes or no for 2024, he's gonna continue to bend these rules as far as he can because he knows like the rest of us do, that the FEC is ultimately going to do absolutely nothing about it.