THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

 The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has released records revealing how partisan deadlock blocked its investigation into potential coordination between former President Trump's 2016 election campaign and the Russian Federation.  

The FEC's nonpartisan professional career staff in its General Counsel's office recommended that the FEC find "reason to believe" that the Trump campaign violated the Federal Election Campaign Act ("the Act") by coordinating with the Russian government, and soliciting and receiving illegal in-kind donations from the Russian government. This misconduct included soliciting Russian assistance in hacking and disclosing emails associated with Trump's political opponents, as well as soliciting hacked documents from WikiLeaks and sharing internal polling data with a Russian intelligence officer working with factions aiming to move Ukraine into the Russian orbit. The staff also recommended finding reason to believe that the Russian government itself violated the Act, by engaging in an illegal influence campaign in the 2016 election, failing to disclose the money spent on that campaign, and making prohibited in-kind contributions to the Trump campaign, including expending resources to hack Clinton-related servers at Trump's request. But the FEC split 3-3 on the staff recommendation, and thus blocked the investigation from proceeding.

These new findings were made public in response to a December 2016 administrative complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) filed by Free Speech For People and Campaign for Accountability (CfA).

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