FEC chairwoman tells Rep. Davis to butt out
Weintraub defends Trump criticism on election fraud, foreign meddling: ‘I will not be silenced’
Congressman Rodney Davis is under fire from the head of the Federal Elections Commission after he charged her with a conflict of interest. (One Illinois/Ted Cox)
By Ted Cox
The head of the Federal Election Commission defended her attack on President Trump for soliciting foreign help in his 2020 campaign and charging voter fraud in 2016, saying, “I will not be silenced.”
Federal Election Commission Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub made the statement in response to a letter sent by U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis of Taylorville urging an investigation into her criticism of the president.
Weintraub posted Davis’s letter on Twitter last week. Sent to the FEC inspector general on Thursday, it charged “potential violations of federal ethics regulations” by Weintraub in her repeated calls for Trump to substantiate claims of voter fraud in New Hampshire in the 2016 election, as well as Weintraub’s criticism of his soliciting foreign help from Ukraine and China in the ongoing 2020 presidential campaign.
“I will not be silenced,” Weintraub tersely tweeted in response. “The independence of the United States Federal Election Commission will not be compromised.”
Davis cited several instances of Weintraub calling on Trump to substantiate claims of voter fraud in New Hampshire in 2016, dating back to shortly after his inauguration in 2017. As head of the FEC, Weintraub called on Trump to “provide evidence,” which he never did, and she dismissed his attempt in 2017 to create an Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. “Mr. President, take responsibility for your words,” she said in an official FEC statement. “Document them if you can. Apologize for them if you have to. But don’t ship them off to a commission. You’d be asking them to build a bridge you already crossed.”
Davis, one of four Illinois Republican congressmen appointed honorary chairmen of Trump’s 2020 statewide campaign, also took issue with how Weintraub posted a draft last month on her interpretation of a rule on “the ban of foreign national participation in elections.” He charged her with a “conflict of interest” and said her statements to the media on the matters constituted “political opinions.”
Weintraub responded that looking into election fraud — and unsubstantiated charges of voter fraud — is exactly her role as FEC head, and she cited the findings of a 2017 investigation by the inspector general that found “no evidence that Commissioner Weintraub violated ethical standards.”
She tweeted last week: “My response then and now: ‘It is absolutely within my official duties as a federal election official to comment publicly on any aspect of the integrity of federal elections in the United States. I will not be silenced.’”
Weintraub also defended her ruling — first issued in June after Trump told ABC News reporter George Stephanopoulos that he’d welcome foreign help in the 2020 election — that such aid would be illegal.
Beginning with the preamble, “I would not have thought that I needed to say this,” she issued a formal statement saying: “Let me make something 100 percent clear to the American public and anyone running for public office: it is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election.”
Trump, according to a White House transcript, asked the president of Ukraine in a July phone conversation to investigate leading Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, while withholding $400 million in U.S. aid to Ukraine. When that call came to light in the infamous whistleblower’s complaint, that led U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to open a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump’s actions. Trump then suggested openly in a media news conference that China should also investigate Biden.
Weintraub, meanwhile, retweeted her June tweet on foreign election interference, while adding the comment, “Is this thing on?” augmented with a microphone icon.
On Tuesday, Weintraub told National Public Radio station WGLT-FM at Illinois State University in Normal that Davis was trying to “intimidate” her, adding, “He wants somebody to tell me to stop talking. That is inappropriate for a member of Congress to be telling the head of an independent agency — particularly the one that regulates Congress — that she should just sit down and shut up.”