(The Hill) — The Trump campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Tuesday, accusing Vice President Harris’s campaign of improperly taking over President Biden’s campaign funds when he left the race Monday.
The complaint, reported by The New York Times, came after the Biden campaign account changed its name to “Harris for President” on Monday following the president’s announcement that he would not seek reelection.
“Kamala Harris is seeking to perpetrate a $91.5 million dollar heist of Joe Biden’s leftover campaign cash — a brazen money grab that would constitute the single largest excessive contribution and biggest violation in the history of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended,” Trump campaign counsel David Warrington wrote.
The suit seeks to block Harris’s access to the war chest. While most campaign finance experts believe that Harris has rightful access to the funds, as she was on Biden’s ticket as the vice presidential candidate, it’s unclear what the FEC will finally rule.
Harris’s campaign has broken fundraising records since launching Monday, raking in more than $80 million in its first 24 hours.
The complaint demands a criminal investigation of the conduct, claiming that renaming the committee for Harris is a form of fraud. It instead argues that Biden should be forced to refund his contributions instead of transferring them to Harris.
The Harris campaign “is in the process of committing the largest campaign finance violation in American history and she is using the Commission’s own forms to do it,” Warrington wrote.
Republican FEC Chair Sean Cooksey, a Trump appointee, suggested Monday that he could be against allowing Harris to access the funds.
“I think it’s really complicated, is the short answer,” Cooksey told “Morning Edition” on NPR. “What he’s attempting to do is to give his entire committee, the cash and all the assets, over to another person.”
“I think it’s gonna have to go through a process, through the FEC,” Cooksey added. “I expect, there’s probably going to be challenges to that at the agency, and probably in the courts as well.”
Democratic Commissioner Dara Lindenbaum, who chaired the commission last year, pushed back on the suggestion that Harris would not be able to access those funds.
“It’s quite clear, Vice President Harris can continue using the campaign committee and its funds,” Lindenbaum told The Hill.
Steve Roberts, former general counsel to Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, was also skeptical of Cooksey’s comments.
“This interpretation is likely wishful thinking,” Roberts told The Hill.
“Since the declarations of candidacy for 2024, the reasonable interpretation is that the Biden campaign committee is a shared one between Harris [and] Biden, and perhaps uniquely so because they are incumbents. Otherwise, in 2020, Trump-Pence wouldn’t have had a shared committee, but would have set up separate committees and had their own contribution limits,” he explained.
Harris campaign spokesperson Charles Lutvak brushed off the concerns, pointing to the campaign’s strong fundraising.
“Team Harris will continue to build on our more than 250 coordinated offices and more than 1,300 coordinated staffers across the battleground states — just like we built on the $240 million cash on hand that we had at launch this week, raising $100 million in our first 36 hours and signing up 58,000 volunteers,” he said in a statement to The Hill.
“Republicans may be jealous that Democrats are energized to defeat Donald Trump and his MAGA allies, but baseless legal claims — like the ones they’ve made for years to try to suppress votes and steal elections — will only distract them while we sign up volunteers, talk to voters, and win this election.”
Taylor Giorno contributed to this report.
