Discrepancies in campaign finance filings for President Trump's inauguration should concern lawmakers, FEC
One of the casualties of not having a fully functional Federal Election Commission (FEC) for nearly five months and counting has been that the inaugural committee for President Donald Trump — which raised a record-breaking $250 million — has faced minimal scrutiny despite having to reconcile numerous discrepancies and submitting seven amended reports since its first mandatory campaign finance filing in mid-April.
While inaugural committees associated with previous presidents — including Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama — have also amended their original reports to include additional financial information, the nature and scale of the discrepancies in Trump’s filings raise serious concerns.
Earlier this month, more than a dozen members of Congress sent a letter to Trump’s inaugural committee seeking explanations for these inconsistencies and discrepancies, as NOTUS first reported. Additionally, Issue One has identified three more inconsistencies that have not previously been reported.
These lawmakers requested a response by tomorrow, Sept. 26. It remains to be seen how the inaugural committee will respond.
Inconsistencies, errors, and discrepancies in campaign finance reports raise significant questions about the processes and procedures in place by both Trump’s inaugural committee and by the FEC to ensure compliance with the law. The FEC was designed to guard against both sloppiness in accounting practices by political players as well as violations of our nation’s anti-corruption laws. Yet without a quorum to conduct business, the FEC cannot act as a timely enforcer of campaign finance regulations or conduct important activities such as auditing Trump’s inaugural committee.
What’s even more concerning is that after Trump’s first inauguration, the FEC’s inspector general found that the FEC’s oversight of inaugural committees was “insufficient concerning the identification of potential violations.” As the nation’s top civil campaign finance watchdog, the FEC must be well-equipped to ensure transparency and accountability, especially since inaugural committees often provide major donors with a seat at the table and the ability to garner influence with a president’s administration.
The FEC’s inspector general recommended that the FEC update “relevant standards to clarify criteria used to identify potential violations” in future reports filed by inaugural committees, but it is unclear how, or if, it has done so.
The three new discrepancies that Issue One has identified include one error that has since been corrected and two that have not yet been, specifically:
Trump’s inaugural committee initially improperly attributed a $1 million contribution to the Lumbermens Merchandising Corporation, a timber industry group, when that money really came from defense contractor Lockheed Martin. This has since been corrected.
Trump’s inaugural committee has failed to report a $150,000 contribution from Elevance Health, the major health insurance company formerly known as Anthem. We only know Elevance Health contributed this sum because the company disclosed it on a mandatory report it had to file with Congress earlier this year.
Trump’s inaugural committee has failed to report $22,922 worth of in-kind contributions from alcohol distributor Diageo North America, and it improperly labeled the company’s separate $125,000 contribution as “in-kind.” Like the Elevance Health contribution, these two contributions by Diageo North America were disclosed in mandatory filings submitted to Congress earlier this year.
Issue One’s new findings bring the total number of known discrepancies up to at least 10. All told, this means Trump’s inaugural committee’s initial filing underreported its contributions by nearly $3 million and improperly attributed at least five contributions.
Other underreported contributions include:
$1 million from social media giant X (previously known as Twitter),
nearly $900,000 from Amazon,
$538,000 from General Motors, and
$250,000 from Microsoft.
Meanwhile, Trump’s inaugural committee also originally improperly attributed a $100,000 contribution from the corporate treasury of the U.S. Automobile Association (USAA) to the trade association’s PAC.
And the inaugural committee also originally attributed a $1 million contribution from Alexander Karp, CEO of Palantir Technologies — which has been awarded millions in government contracts across multiple administrations — to an accounting firm known as Wipfli LLP, as Issue One first reported.
Both of these improperly attributed contributions have since been corrected, as have the initially missing contributions from X and Amazon.
Moreover, numerous foreign nationals and foreign-connected businesses attempted to contribute to Trump’s inaugural committee — one of the few meaningful restrictions that inaugural committees face.
An analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice found that more than 50% of the $6.2 million that Trump’s inaugural committee refunded to donors have ties to foreign entities — with many making six- or seven-figure contributions.
While U.S. citizens living abroad are allowed to donate to federal candidates and political groups, including inaugural committees, foreign nationals are not. Ahead of the inauguration in January, a group of lawmakers urged Trump’s inaugural committee to take extra precautions to ensure illegal foreign contributions were not accepted. The report from the FEC’s inspector general went so far as to recommend that the FEC establish a threshold at which donations connected to foreign addresses would automatically trigger requests for additional information.
What’s more, as Issue One has previously noted, is that the public remains completely in the dark about how inaugural committees spend the immense sums they raise. Inaugural committees have no legal requirement to disclose their spending, only their contributors. Lawmakers in both parties should see the value in future administrations revealing spending information as well, as one bill introduced earlier this year by Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) calls for.
The reality today is that without accountability for its mistakes, any errors or oversights by Trump’s inaugural committee could set a dangerous precedent for future administrations. Much of the accountability we’ve seen to date exists because journalists and watchdogs have painstakingly compared filings submitted to the FEC by Trump’s inaugural committee to public statements and documents submitted to Congress by special interests. The FEC needs robust oversight practices in place to prevent violations of the law, though until it regains a quorum, the FEC remains a watchdog without much bite — leaving the public to wonder if these inconsistencies and discrepancies in Trump’s inaugural committee’s filings are just the tip of the iceberg.
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|