Back on June 10, I blogged about an extraordinary statement of reasons from Commissioners Weintraub and Bauerly in which they called the Republican Commissioners’ actions in an enforcement case “inexplicable.” The statement later caught the attention of the Washington Post editorial board.
Today the three Republican commissioners explained themselves. You can read the 20-page document here. It begins (footnotes omitted):

MUR 5957 presents an enforcement action that should have been handled differently from start to finish. The matter illustrates a number of shortcomings in the Commission’s procedures and processes (particularly in the areas of due process and civil penalty calculation), and highlights a troubling disparity in campaign finance law: rote enforcement of hyper-technical rules often has an unfair impact on inexperienced political participants. And tragically, being subjected to such treatment leads many to swear off future involvement in the federal election process. That such shortcomings tend to have a disparate impact on inexperienced candidates who operate on small budgets and rely on non-professional staff is illustrated by comparing MURs 5957 (Sekhon) and 6031 (Hagan). Both matters concerned campaigns that ran into problems with a technical reporting issue commonly called “best efforts.” Under that rule, campaign treasurers are supposed to report the occupation and employer of its contributors; however, contributors are not required to provide such information.