Feds Are ‘Begging’ Congress to Stop Donald Trump Donation Scam

While federal campaign finance regulators aren’t known for their aggression, things have gotten so bad that they’re practically begging Congress to give them more weapons to go after political scams—including a recurring donations scheme favored by Donald Trump that has fleeced unwitting supporters for years.

But the recurring donations tactic is just one issue the Federal Election Commission highlighted last week when it published its draft legislation recommendations, the legal wish list the agency sends Congress each year.

It’s not the first time the FEC has floated many of those same proposals, which include requests to shut legal loopholes related to the personal use of political funds, so-called “scam PACs,” and straw donor schemes. The agency asked Congress to put more muscle behind those laws last year, too, but lawmakers seem even more averse to the idea than the notoriously sluggish FEC, whose routine partisan deadlocks over enforcement have led critics to declare the agency “broken.”

Watchdog groups say Congress should pay attention.

Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center, told The Daily Beast these renewed requests indicate that the FEC “absolutely agrees these are problems that need fixing.”

“That agreement is so unusual that it should send a message, but I’m not sure if there’s any change of the facts on the ground to prompt action,” Ghosh said. “It’d be great if they took action before the 2024 election, because it’s fair to think these problems will rear their head again.”

Viki Harrison, director of constitutional convention and protecting dissent programs at Common Cause, said the FEC’s request should be a “wake-up call” for Congress.

“This is an ever-changing field, and the bad actors are always going to try to find a way around the law, but these are all really good policies, and Congress should have implemented them,” Harrison told The Daily Beast, adding that, after multiple requests have gone unanswered, it “sounds like they’re begging” for help.

The scammy tactics identified in the draft request are indeed alive and well.

Take the recurring donations tactic. Throughout the midterms, political committees continued barraging potential donors with controversial fundraising requests with pre-checked boxes to make contributions recur automatically. That’s despite widespread previous reports that 2020 donors—many of them elderly—had complained that the language of those solicitations misled them, claiming they weren’t aware at the time that they were authorizing repeat withdrawals. Many donors have said it’s difficult to cancel the action or get their money back.

A 2021 New York Times investigation found that the tactic had “ensnared” numerous Trump supporters during the 2020 election and its aftermath, even tricking some longtime political operatives. In all, Trump’s 2020 fundraising apparatus refunded more than $120 million, according to FEC data, whereas Joe Biden’s operation—which did not use the tactic—returned just $21 million. (Some Democrats have used pre-checked boxes in the past.)

After that report, the…