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(From left to right 🙂 Christopher Krebs, Director of the US Department of Homeland Security and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security, Adam Hickey, Deputy Attorney General, Christy McCormick, Chair of the Electoral Assistance Commission, and Ellen Weintraub, Commissioner of the US Federal Electoral Commission, are sworn in. Audience of the House Watch Subcommittee on Electoral Security on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 22, 2019. (Pool / Reuters)
Colby Itkowitz
Congress, Campaigns, Health Policy, Pennsylvania Policy
The President of the Federal Election Commission, Ellen Weintraub, issued a statement on Thursday stating that candidates for public office may not receive help from a foreign government, which seemed to be a warning to the government. President Trump, who said he would consider taking information about an opponent from another country. .
Weintraub wrote on his tweet: "I would not have thought I needed to say that."
The head of the election campaign finance agency said any campaign that accepts help from a foreign government "may not be at the center of a federal inquiry."
"Let me do something 100% clear for the American public and anyone who runs for public office," wrote Weintraub. "It is illegal for anyone to solicit, accept or receive anything of value from a foreign national in a US election. This is not a new concept. "
Weintraub issued this statement 24 hours after Trump told ABC News on Wednesday night that he would not necessarily take the necessary steps to enforce the law if a foreign national provided him with political information.
Weintraub, a Democrat, joins a group of legislators, 2020 candidates and former administration officials who have criticized the president for having withheld the idea of ​​accepting such information to the light of the special council report of Robert S. Mueller III that had determined Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The President maintained his position that the information of a foreigner does not must not always be disclosed.
Weintraub's statement, however, did not clarify the question of whether information is valuable, a question that Mueller described was difficult to resolve.
The warning is rather partisan in view of the inability of the FEC to fully implement the electoral laws of the last decade.
For a time, the six-member board of directors, divided into three Democrats and three Republicans, was paralyzed because of a partisan stalemate. There are currently four members and just one member to veto a proposal.
In 2014, Dana Milbank, an opinion writer at the Washington Post, wrote sarcastically, "If you're thinking of violating the federal election law, now is a good time to do it, because the chances of being caught are virtually nil. There is no cop on time.
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