As anticipated, shortly after Joe Biden finally buckled under the pressure from his own party and pulled out of the presidential race, his campaign staff moved rapidly to transfer his campaign war chest over to Kamala Harris. This had been anticipated and it was one of the primary factors that made the Veep the favorite to replace him, despite the misgivings that many senior Democrats have regarding her own electability as well. But now a new wrinkle in the plot has emerged. Was the transfer of funds even legal? I had assumed it would be under the standing rules, but some experts in campaign finance law are suggesting that it may not have been, including the current FEC chairman, who should know the truth if anyone does. Our colleague Katie Pavilich has the details at Townhall.
Shortly after announcing the end of his campaign Sunday afternoon, President Joe Biden's campaign quickly transferred his campaign funds to Vice President Kamala Harris. They did this by renaming the original Biden for President FEC filing as "Harris for President."
But was that transfer legal? The current FEC chairman seems skeptical.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal shortly after the first presidential debate in June, Republican election attorney Charlie Spies outlined the legal complications of Biden leaving the race before receiving the nomination at the DNC convention.
As it turns out, this isn't a question of whether or not the candidate can transfer funds to the running mate. That's possible under the rules. It's a question of how and perhaps even more importantly, when they can do it. And from the description we were given of how it happened, it appears that the Biden-Harris team may have violated those rules in a major way.
The idea of challenging the transfer of funds or having it investigated isn't just some lawfare that the GOP dreamed up after Biden withdrew. You can go back and read this analysis of the campaign finance rules that was published by a Republican election attorney in June in the Wall Street Journal. Even back then, Charlie Spies was cautioning how campaign finance laws created a tremendous incentive for Biden to remain in the race until the nominating convention. As he put it, "At that point, but not before, Mr. Biden would be able to transfer his campaign’s anticipated $100 million war chest."
The issue boils down to the fact that the rules only allow such a transfer by "the candidate" to their running mate. Since the DNC hasn't taken place yet, neither Biden nor Harris are their party's official nominees. Biden would have needed to wait and allow the DNC to nominate him and, by default, his running mate. At that point, he could have dropped out and the transfer could have been made without issue.
But that's not what the Biden campaign team did. They instead amended their original FEC filing and renamed it from "Biden for President" to "Harris for President." The FEC rules dictate that no more than $2,000 of any campaign funds that Biden raised may be transferred to any other candidate, including Kamala Harris. And $2,000 is a massive step down from the more than $100 million she was anticipating. It sounds like the Democrats were either unaware of or simply ignored the rules as we've seen them do so often with other procedural steps such as scheduling their convention after the deadline for designating names for the ballots. Then they are left scrambling to organize a cleanup of their latest mess. But this time we're not talking about party "rules" that they can weave and dodge around. These are standing campaign finance laws, and Biden and Harris do appear to have broken them. It would be hilarious if they went through all of this twisting and turning and gyrating to force through Harris just so she could inherit Joe Biden's campaign funds and then the money simply went up in smoke anyway.
