Long-standing Republican unity on the Federal Election Commission, especially against liberal efforts to expand rules to punish GOP candidates, appears to be in jeopardy with the arrival of a new member who has stirred controversy by voting with Democrats in a key case.
The political fissure was made public last week when the FEC closed a case involving a pro-Trump political action committee and revealed that Republican Commissioner Allen Dickerson sided with all three Democrats to open the investigation in a 4-1 vote in February.
The case involved Great America PAC, GOP political operative Jesse Benton, and a vague foreign contribution sting run in 2016 by the Telegraph, a British newspaper.
Sean Cooksey, one of three Republican commissioners, said in his statement last Friday that he immediately decided against pursuing the case because it didn’t reach even questionable legal standards for violations of election and finance laws….
On Wednesday, Dickerson, the commission’s vice chairman, responded with his own statement “to explain” his initial vote to proceed with the investigation based on a “reason-to-believe” a violation occurred, then eventually to close it over a lack of “probable cause.”
Voting to open the case, he said, was “necessary to prove or disprove” that there was a violation.
“The commission found [reason-to-believe] based on a particular theory and authorized an investigation targeted at the evidence necessary to prove or disprove that theory. Despite this mandate, OGC’s investigation failed to develop the factual record, leaving us, at the probable cause stage, with only marginally useful evidence. Faced with a failed investigation and a newly-advanced legal argument to which OGC had no answer, I voted against a probable cause finding in these matters,” he wrote.
But FEC watchers said that the statement didn’t address the fine to Great America PAC and appeared to open the door to an expanded view of what it takes for cases to begin in the “reason-to-believe” phase.