FEC Commissioner: No Violation in Trump-Daniels Case

A Federal Election Commission member rejected the premise behind Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s 34-count felony indictment of former President Donald Trump, saying that hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels is “not a campaign finance violation.”

“It’s not a reporting violation of any kind,” FEC Commissioner James “Trey” Trainor, a Trump appointee, told The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard for Bedard’s “Washington Secrets’ column. 

By trying to make the issue appear to be a violation, Bragg is “trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole,” Trainor said. 

He further said that the FEC and the Justice Department had already considered the case and set it aside, and said it will be difficult for a judge or jury to find a different conclusion since the Department of Justice and the FEC prosecute violations of federal campaign law, not a New York City courtroom. 

There are several reasons why the FEC dismissed the case, Trainor said in a statement he and fellow Commissioner Sean Cooksey wrote in April 2021. 

First, they wrote that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, now the key witness in Bragg’s case, took the blame for the payments during his own plea deal.

Also, as the paperwork violations in Trump’s indictment are based on payments made after Trump won the 2016 election, so they would not have helped him win, and it’s not obvious that the reimbursement payments to Cohen were made to influence the election. 

“It has to be something that anybody on the street can look at and say the only reason you did that was to influence the campaign,” said Trainor. “There’s a lot of reasons that he could have done it that aren’t related to him being a candidate for president, and so, therefore, it wouldn’t have met the standard as campaign expenditure under federal law.”

Trainor added that as the statute of limitations was running out on the case, it was not worth the time or expense to prosecute. 

“I think the jury is going to see that and they’re going to have to rely upon the fact that both the law enforcement experts and the civil enforcement experts, as far as campaign finance are concerned, didn’t find any violation of the law here,” Trainor said.