Ron DeSantis Hit With FEC Complaint For Alleged Campaign Finance Violations

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has been hit with an ethics complaint to the Federal Elections Commission that accuses him of breaking campaign finance laws by transferring money from the PAC that he started for his governor's races over to his federal Super PAC that is supporting his presidential campaign. This is illegal under current law, but DeSantis' camp says they did nothing wrong because DeSantis is allegedly no longer associated with the state PAC. This is all very stupid, and could get even dumber, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

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

The good folks at the campaign Legal Center have filed a legal complaint against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis this week with the Federal Elections Commission alleging that DeSantis has illegally funneled $80 million from his friends of DeSantis political action committee here in Florida to his never back down super pac that is of course supporting his run for president. And to spare you the intricacies of campaign finance laws, let me put it this way, we discussed this by the way, when Donald Trump first announced he was running for president, that he had this big campaign war chest in his pack that he wasn't legally allowed to touch because it wasn't a federal super pac. And that's the same situation we're dealing with here with Ron DeSantis. He had his state pack. The Friends of Ron DeSantis had hundreds of millions of dollars in it by the way. But when he decided to run for president, he was no longer allowed to touch any of that money, including transferring it into his new super PAC that he created for his presidential run.

It's illegal under federal law to move the soft money from the pack to the super pack. Even with Citizens United, even with McCutchen, it is still illegal to do that. And that's what this complaint from the campaign Legal Center says, DeSantis illegally moved $80 million. He can't do that. Please, for the love of God, somebody at the F E C wake up and realize that we have people out here breaking campaign finance laws and y'all are asleep at the wheel. Now I commend the campaign legal center for doing this. I really like them. It's a great organization with some really great people, but I think they know the same thing that I know that the FEC is probably not gonna do a thing about any of this. They never do. And if they do, it'll be a slap on the wrist. And if it comes to that point, all Ron DeSantis is gonna do is challenge it in court, send it up to the Supreme Court where they're gonna issue a new ruling that says, oh, by the way, you can do that.

So like best case scenario is that the FEC does nothing. Worst case scenario is that they do something and DeSantis challenges it to the Supreme Court and makes it legal. Ted Cruz did that last year. Basically got rid of the limits to what a candidate can be reimbursed that they loan to their campaign because he took it to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court overturned it, and now candidates can loan themselves or can loan their campaign unlimited money and pay themselves back unlimited money instead of the $250,000 cap that had been there. So this is what we're dealing with. We're dealing with an FEC that doesn't like to enforce the rules and we're dealing with a US Supreme Court that

Will, will ultimately get to decide the rules. If a Republican gets mad and decides to challenge any punishment, the FEC hands down. So I know this sounds a bit like a complicated story here, but this is what we're dealing with. Ron DeSantis it, it appears based on the evidence, has clearly violated these campaign laws and nothing's gonna happen to him, or something does happen to him. And the Supreme Court decides to break the entire system, which basically means no holds barred on any campaign finance issues for everybody else moving forward.