Reaching into the FEC: removing the campaign-finance regulator

Editor's note: the removal of the campaign-finance regulator is documented, but no court or official finding has established that it was unlawful or retaliatory.

By a letter dated January 31, 2025 but not transmitted until February 6, Trump sought to remove Ellen Weintraub, the long-serving Democratic commissioner and chair of the Federal Election Commission, without cause. The letter read, in part, 'You are hereby removed as a Member of the Federal Election Commission.' Weintraub responded publicly: 'There's a legal way to replace FEC commissioners-this isn't it.' Her six-year term had expired in April 2007, and under FEC rules she continued to serve as a holdover until a successor was confirmed.

The FEC's own records give her service as ending in February 2025. In an amicus brief filed March 26, 2025, she wrote that her firing 'leaves the FEC with a mere four Commissioners—the bare minimum to form a quorum.' With Commissioner Allen Dickerson's departure on April 30, 2025, the commission fell to three members and could not open new investigations or approve settlement agreements, stalling federal campaign-finance enforcement.

The FEC polices the campaign money that flows to the president and his party, including the donor relationships that recur across the Pardons and Office-for-Private-Gain categories. The removal fit the February pattern of reaching into nominally independent accountability bodies (the Office of Government Ethics, the Office of Special Counsel and the FEC), and it tested a removal power the courts have historically constrained for multimember independent commissions.