(Tony Sifert, Headline USA) The Federal Election Commission has fined both the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for lying about their respective roles in the Russia Hoax, according to the Washington Examiner.
In a letter to Dan Backer of the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, the FEC said that it had “found probable cause to believe that” the DNC and Hillary for America both had violated the reporting requirements contained in 52 U.S.C. § 30104(b)(5)(A) and 11 C.F.R. § 104.3(b)(4)(i).
The DNC paid $849,407.97 and Hillary for America $175,000 to the law firm Perkins Coie, money which was used to fund the Fusion GPS “opposition research” that led to the production of Christopher Steele’s Trump dossier.
Both the DNC and Clinton’s campaign categorized the payments as “legal advice and services,” which the FEC held broke the law.
The FEC fined the Clinton campaign treasurer $8,000 and the DNC’s treasurer $105,000, the Examiner reported.
Backer filed his complaint with the FEC in September 2018.
“This may well be the first time that Hillary Clinton — one of the most evidently corrupt politicians in American history — has actually been held legally accountable,” he told the Examiner. “I’m proud to have forced the FEC to do their job for once.”
“Hillary Clinton and her cronies willfully engaged in the greatest political fraud in history — destroying our nation’s faith in the electoral process, and it’s high time they were held accountable,” he continued. “I hope this is only the beginning.”
A spokesman for the DNC, however, said that neither the DNC nor Clinton’s campaign had admitted to any wrongdoing.
“We settled aging and silly complaints from the 2016 election about ‘purpose descriptions’ in our FEC report,” Daniel Wessel told Politico.
President Donald Trump released a statement following the FEC’s decision.
“Just found out that the 2016 Clinton Campaign and the DNC paid the FEC today for violating the law . . . to try and take down and illegally destroy your favorite President, me,” Trump wrote.
“This was done to create, as I have stated many times, and is now confirmed, a Hoax funded by the DNC and the Clinton Campaign,” he wrote. “Where do I go to get my reputation back?”
