How Republicans will try to hold Biden’s campaign coffers hostage

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Republican Party officials are apparently preparing legal threats to prevent Kamala Harris from inheriting huge campaign funds from Joe Biden after his presidential campaign ends.

Hours after Biden endorsed his vice president for the Democratic nomination, campaign officials told the Federal Election Commission that the Biden-Harris campaign was now carrying “Harris for President.”

According to government records, Harris’ campaign now has more than $90 million in cash. Her candidacy also opened the floodgates for small and large donors to the campaign and Democratic causes. Within 24 hours of its launch, Harris’ campaign raised $81 million.

But now lawyers and Republican Party officials are arguing that things cannot be changed easily and suggest that a legal battle is now underway to stop the flow of money.

Moments after Biden announced the end of his re-election campaign, Sean Cooksey, the chairman of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEC) appointed by Donald Trump, released an excerpt from campaign finance law that requires donations to a general election candidate to be refunded or redirected if that candidate does not run.

“I think it’s really complicated, is the short answer,” Cooksey told NPR on Monday.

“He’s trying to give his entire committee, the money and all the assets to another person,” he said. “I think that’s going to have to go through a process, through the FEC … I expect there will probably be objections at the agency and probably in court.”

Republican-aligned campaign finance lawyer Charlie Spies also claimed that both Biden and Harris would have to be nominated by the party before the funds could be disbursed at the Democratic convention next month.

“Biden cannot transfer his money to Harris because it was raised in his own name and there is no legal mechanism for it to be raised jointly with Harris before they were their party’s nominees,” Spies said. The Washington Post.

But Harris’ name was already on campaign finance documents as Biden’s running mate, and “because Biden and Harris share a campaign committee, the vice president and her running mate can continue to use existing campaign funds for the general election if she is on the Democratic ballot as the presidential or vice presidential nominee,” according to the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan election advocacy group.

The excerpt from the order cited by Cooksey also applies only to campaign funds raised in advance of the general election – not money raised during the primary, which is technically still underway. The party has not yet officially nominated a candidate.

Even other GOP-affiliated lawyers are skeptical.

“The reasonable interpretation is that the Biden campaign committee is shared by Harris (and) Biden, and perhaps uniquely because they are incumbents,” said Steve Roberts, former general counsel to Vivek Ramaswamy, in an interview with The hill.

Former FEC Commissioner Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal scholar at the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, also rejected arguments that Harris did not have access to the funds. He pointed out that the Biden-Harris campaign was the “most important campaign committee” for both Biden and Harris.

The 2024 Biden-Harris campaign has amassed a sizable war chest, with more than $200 million in assets, according to government records, including those of other Democratic-supporting organizations and political action committees.

According to campaign finance analysts, what happens to this campaign money will only become tricky if Harris is not ultimately nominated as a candidate.

In that case, which seems unlikely given that Harris has attracted no challengers and has received support from key Democratic officials and state delegates, the money could be refunded to donors, transferred to the Democratic National Committee or state parties, or flow into a new Super PAC supporting the new candidate.

Right-wing legal groups are seeking to slow any Democratic momentum if Biden drops out of the race, while Trump’s campaign prepares for a landslide victory against the president.

A legal campaign run by the Heritage Foundation is preparing to file lawsuits in key swing states to keep Biden’s name on the ballot, legal analysts said The Independent is virtually impossible because the Democratic Party has not even officially named a candidate yet. There would be a narrow time frame to make any changes legally contestable if Harris or another candidate who wins the nomination drops out of the race after the convention.

“So we are forced to spend time and money fighting fraudulent Joe Biden. He is polling poorly after a terrible debate and is dropping out of the race,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday, among numerous other posts complaining about his new Democratic challenger.

“Now we have to start all over again.”