CNBC:

The Federal Election Commission in August started to move ahead with halting its investigation into the now defunct data harvesting company Cambridge Analytica, the firm that worked for Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign for president and other GOP run groups.

The FEC was investigating whether Cambridge Analytica embedded foreign nationals into Republican campaigns during the 2014 and 2016 U.S. election cycles, and if those people made decisions for various political organizations, which is against the law. The company was originally headquartered in London.

The probe came after multiple complaints were filed to the FEC against Cambridge Analytica, including one from campaign watchdog Common Cause. Cambridge Analytica has been accused of illegally harvesting Facebook profile data, something the company has denied. Those accusations led to multiple federal inquiries, including one by the Federal Trade Commission, and the company announced it was shutting down in 2018.

The FEC has been criticized for years for not having enough funding, manpower and time to enforce election laws and it appeared to have those same problems in this case.

“Having concluded the investigation, the record before the Commission does not sufficiently establish the extent of the potential violations to support further action, and the investigation is unlikely to uncover additional information without the expenditure of significant additional resources. Moreover, the violations appear to have expired under the five-year statute of limitations,” the FEC general counsel’s second report says, which was signed by officials in August….

The FEC general counsel’s first report in late 2018 recommended that the commission would have strong grounds to investigate Cambridge Analytica, at least two company officials, and all of the campaigns mentioned in the original complaints, including Trump’s, for campaign law violations. It is illegal for American campaigns to be run by foreigners or accept campaign contributions from non U.S. citizens, and doing so can result in fines or referrals to the Department of Justice.

The initial report specifically advised the commission to “find reason to believe” that those targeted in the first complaints may have broken the law.

Still, despite that initial recommendation by the general counsel to launch a larger probe into the alleged illegal behavior by Cambridge Analytica and the GOP campaigns, Shana Broussard and Ellen Weintraub, two Democratic FEC commissioners, said in a joint statement this month that the commission itself in 2019 voted only to move ahead with finding reason to believe that federal campaign finance laws were broken during the 2014 election cycle. That allowed the Trump campaign, a Republican super PAC that backed the former commander in chief, and Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign for president virtually off the hook.

The two commissioners took aim at the FEC after the general counsel recommend stopping the inquiry, noting it was a result of the commission’s lack of urgency to stop foreigners from interfering in future elections.