Commissioners will continue to exercise prosecutorial discretion – the judicially unreviewable superpower granted to them by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals –unless and until the Court reconsiders its rulings in the Commission on Hope, Growth & Opportunity and New Models cases.
Until then, commissioners will be free to determine that Commission resources “would be best spent elsewhere” – although with only seven cases currently under investigation and the enforcement division’s investigatory authority newly hamstrung,16 it’s not clear where. And for those keeping count, the tally is now 59 times the Commission has been presented with allegations that Mr. Trump or his committees violated the FECA, 29 times the Commission’s nonpartisan professional staff recommended that we take some steps to enforce the law, and (checks notes) still zero times a Republican commissioner has voted to approve any recommendation to enforce the law against Mr. Trump