A Federal Elections Commission member told a House panel that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg "usurped" federal law and the jurisdiction of Congress via his application of federal campaign law in charges and subsequent trial of former President Donald Trump.
Further, Commissioner Trey Trainor accused the Department of Justice of sitting "idly by" when it should have intervened in Bragg's case.
Trainor made the comments in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
"By pursuing charges related to alleged violations of federal campaign finance laws, Mr. Bragg has effectively usurped the jurisdiction that Congress has explicitly reserved for federal authorities," Trainor said in his opening statement. "This overreach not only undermines the statutory framework established by FECA but also sets a troubling precedent for the politicization of legal proceedings at the state level."
Bragg's prosecution of Trump was based on a state statute that Trump tried to influence the 2016 election by "unlawful means." Bragg cited the $130,000 payment to former porn actress Stormy Daniels as the instrument to prosecute Trump and gave the jury three options to apply it, one of them being a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA).
A jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in a Manhattan courtroom on May 30.
Trainor ripped the DOJ for allowing "a state officer to assert federal jurisdiction where they themselves had taken jurisdiction and couldn't prosecute."
In a separate column he wrote for the Daily Caller on Thursday, Trainor, who was FEC chairman in 2020, wrote that it's "perplexing" why U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland "did not intervene" in Trump's prosecution.
At issue, Trainor wrote, is that the framework of FECA is "designed to ensure a uniform application of campaign finance laws nationwide." Bragg's charges against Trump marked a "significant deviation" from that framework, Trainor wrote.
"Now imagine the 50 states enacting the crime of 'campaigning by unlawful means' and a thousand different state and local prosecutors prosecuting presidents, former presidents, presidential candidates, and any number of candidates for other federal offices under varying interpretations of the FECA by bootstrapping those laws through their state's 'unlawful means' criminal code," Trainor wrote in the Daily Caller.
As he told the committee, there will continue to be "more politically motived prosecutions" if steps aren't taken to ensure that the DOJ and FEC have the "exclusive authority" to enforce campaign laws.
"The dangerous precedent of local prosecutorial overreach in matters of federal concern must not be left unaddressed," he told lawmakers.
Bragg has agreed to appear before the committee on July 12, the day after Trump's sentencing hearing in Manhattan.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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