WHAT A CAMPAIGN IN THE NECK
- Disgraced former president Trump launched a legal battle royale over campaign funds Tuesday by filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission to stop Vice President Harris from using $91.5 million raised by the Biden-Harris campaign. It’s just the latest attempt by Trump and his allies to wrongfoot Harris, now that their plan to run against President Biden has been thrown into chaos. (Yesterday, we wrote about their doomed scheme to keep her off state ballots. If you missed it, TL;DR: Nice try, fellas!)
- Most legal experts agree that Harris should be legally able to take over the funds she and Biden raised together. An existing provision in federal campaign finance law “provides for the sharing of a campaign committee between a presidential and vice presidential candidate,” Erin Chlopak, the senior director for campaign finance at the Campaign Legal Center, told What A Day. Biden For President, as an entity, “was, in fact, also Vice President Harris’s official campaign committee,” Chlopak said. “So long as [Harris] continued to be on the ticket, whether she were on the ticket as a candidate for president or a candidate for vice president, she would continue to have access to those funds,” Chlopak said.
- A small but vocal contingent of Republican and conservative lawyers disagrees, however. “Biden can’t transfer his money to Harris,” Charlie Spies, a prominent GOP campaign finance lawyer, told the Washington Post this week.
- The question now appears destined to spark a politically charged debate among the FEC’s six commissioners, who are evenly balanced among Democrats and Republicans. Dara Lindenbaum, a Democratically-appointed FEC commissioner, told the New York Times this week that the situation is “very clear…. If Kamala Harris is the Democratic presidential nominee, she gets to use all the money in the account.” But Sam Cooksey, the Trump-appointed FEC chairman, disagreed, telling NPR the situation is “really complicated.”
- Any Republican challenge would be up against the clock. In Chlopak’s words, that process is “certainly not quick.” The preliminary steps required for the FEC to even launch an investigation “typically takes months, if not years,” Chlopak said. “The FEC just is not a speedy agency. It’s in fact, known for the opposite.” The FEC even has a provision in which one can sue the agency for “unreasonable delay,” but such a suit can’t even be brought unless a complaint has been pending with the agency for at least 120 days. The election is in 104 days.
- The sheer novelty of the situation leaves some uncertainty about what will happen next, however. While Trump’s challenge is likely to fail, this kind of massive changeup has never happened so late in a presidential campaign before, noted Anna Massoglia, the Editorial and Investigations Manager at OpenSecrets. “It’s unprecedented territory here,” Massoglia said. “There’s a lot that’s still up in the air.”
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NEWS NEWS NEWS
Harris has effectively locked up the Democratic presidential nomination, after securing enough verbal commitments from delegates to hit the necessary threshold. The news comes as the Democratic National Committee pushes ahead with a virtual roll call vote to make the nomination official by Aug 7.
Harris may pick her own veep as soon as next week in order to add them to that roll call vote. Names under consideration include Govs. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), Roy Cooper (D-NC), Andy Beshear (D-KY) and Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ). Damn, isn’t it cool to be in the exciting part of a presidential campaign again?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address Congress on Wednesday. Police arrested protestors who staged a Tuesday mass sit-in inside a congressional office building, organized by Jewish Voice for Peace. Additional protests are planned to continue.
President Biden is planning to meet Netanyahu on Thursday. Disgraced former President Trump will meet with Netanyahu on Friday in Florida, a likely place for two right-wing megalomaniacs to convene!
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) will resign on August 20, following his conviction in a corruption trial over accusations that he took bribes and worked as a foreign agent for Egypt. Thanks Bob, for proving Democrats can do corruption, too! We wouldn’t want people to forget.
Biden will address the country from the Oval Office on Wednesday in his first public remarks since he stepped aside and endorsed Harris as his successor. He is expected to detail how he plans to finish his job in the White House as Republicans call for his resignation.
Kimberly Cheatle resigned as U.S. Secret Service director Tuesday after a contentious Congressional hearing and amid calls to step down over the assassination attempt on Trump.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries announced a bipartisan taskforce to investigate the shooting at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania two weeks ago.
George Clooney endorsed Harris’s “historic bid” for president, after the Hollywood A-lister called for Biden to drop out of the race proving once again that it is possible to be extremely handsome AND politically astute.
Delta is under federal investigation as the airline scrambles to rebound after the global massive IT outage last week, lagging behind its competitors. Do you know how messed up your airline has to be when Spirit Airlines looks fully operational in comparison???
Snoop Dogg will be an Olympic torchbearer during the 2024 summer games in Paris. Why would they give him this job when his whole job is to drop hot things.
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