A longtime Democratic Federal Election Commission member fired by President Donald Trump is seeking payback by joining a partisan suit to block one of the new president’s executive orders.
Ellen Weintraub, who had sharply criticized Trump in past statements and online postings, joined the Democratic Party’s bid to block enforcement of an executive order the party claims could end the FEC’s independence.
“If there is any agency that partisan elected officials — including the president — must not be allowed to bend to their will, it is the body that regulates them when they run for office: the Federal Election Commission,” said her “friend of the court” brief filed by her lawyers and Harvard Law School’s Election Law Clinic.
Without showing evidence, Weintraub, the DNC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said the executive order would be used by Trump to steer election regulations in his favor.
In his complaint for the DNC, DSCC, and DCCC, liberal election lawyer Marc Elias said that Executive Order 14215 gives Trump broad power over independent agencies created to rule in a bipartisan manner.
“By providing that no employee of the executive branch may advance an interpretation that contravenes the president or the attorney general’s opinion on a matter of law, the executive order purports to provide President Trump — the leader of the Republican Party — with the ability to order the FEC to take particular positions on any question of law arising in the commission’s performance of any of its duties,” said the Elias brief.
Weintraub agreed and said in her filing, “The president may opine on any of the myriad legal issues faced by the FEC, and, if he chooses to do so, the FEC must then parrot his positions.”
Trump dumped Weintraub from the FEC in early February and has not selected a replacement. The Republican former chairman, Sean Cooksey, was picked as counsel to Vice President JD Vance, leaving two Republican and two Democrat FEC commissioners.
Weintraub claimed that Trump couldn’t fire her, but she cleaned out her desk and did not use her brief to argue that she be given her job back. It did, however, claim that her firing was indicative of how she feels Trump will interfere with the FEC, which mostly oversees campaign spending.
Her brief also appeared to hit the remaining members in claiming they may give in to Trump’s wishes to save their jobs. “President Trump’s choice to remove Commissioner Weintraub undermines the agency’s independence. Her firing serves notice to the remaining commissioners that they, like Commissioner Weintraub, could be removed at any moment, for partisan or ideological reasons or on no basis at all. To avoid this fate, these commissioners may well feel pressured to change their behavior, preemptively acting in ways expected to please the president. This anticipatory skewing of agency action is exactly what the FEC’s independence is meant to prevent,” said her filing released by the FEC on Monday.
SEE THE LATEST POLITICAL NEWS AND BUZZ FROM WASHINGTON SECRETS
Trump’s order, titled “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies,” puts independent agencies on notice that the White House is in charge of regulations and that new rules must go through the Office of Management and Budget, not just issued willy-nilly.
“For the federal government to be truly accountable to the American people, officials who wield vast executive power must be supervised and controlled by the people’s elected president,” said Trump’s order. It added, “Therefore, in order to improve the administration of the executive branch and to increase regulatory officials’ accountability to the American people, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch. Moreover, all executive departments and agencies, including so-called independent agencies, shall submit for review all proposed and final significant regulatory actions to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Executive Office of the President before publication in the Federal Register.”