Can Kamala Harris access Biden campaign money? : NPR

The Biden campaign said it had $240 million in cash on hand as of early July. It appears to have spent most of that since then on advertising, personnel and other expenses, but questions remain about whether other candidates can or should have access to that money now that Biden is out of office.

The short answer seems to be that Vice President Harris, already the presumptive Democratic nominee, has a stronger claim to the money because she was listed on Biden’s running mate — a claim that many campaign finance experts say other candidates don’t.

Those candidates would have to rely on Biden to donate money to outside groups or super PACs, or start their own groups or super PACs to support potential Democratic candidates, but they would have no control over that money or how it’s spent.

Some right-wing campaign finance lawyers believe the situation is more complicated and that Harris’ access is by no means a certainty, even though the Biden campaign has already changed its name to the Harris campaign.

In any case, realistically speaking, the question may be moot in the short term, given how long it takes the FEC to adjudicate complaints. Harris will almost certainly have access to funds through a condensed campaign, and there is little the FEC can do about it, given the timeline.

actual, Some people point outHowever, he still has an outstanding complaint with the FEC regarding the 2016 campaign.

FEC Chairman Sean Cooksey, a Republican appointed by former President Donald Trump, is one of three Republicans on the commission, the other three are Democrats.

he Suggested in a social media post Harris kicked off the debate on the issue by saying he may not actually be eligible to access the funds, and he pointed to this regulation.

11 CFR § 110.1(b)(3): “If a candidate is not a candidate in the general election, all contributions made for the general election shall be returned or refunded to the donors or reallocated or reassigned, as appropriate.”

“The short answer is, I think it’s very complicated,” Cooksey said on NPR’s Morning Edition on Monday.

He added: “I think it’s going to have to go through the Federal Election Commission, and I think it’s going to be challenged probably not only at the FEC but also in court.”

Others disagree and think this is pretty simple.

“It doesn’t seem that complicated to me,” Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat and longtime FEC commissioner who serves as vice chair of the FEC, said in a phone interview.

She points to the fact that Harris’ name has always been listed as one of the candidates in the Biden Presidential Campaign Committee’s organizational statements.

“It’s the same committee at the end of the day,” Weintraub said. “She’s been on that committee all this time. We’ve never set a cap on contributions apart from this committee that already has her name on it. I’m not the only one. I hear lawyers all over the city saying the same thing. Someone’s sure to bring up technical arguments, and I want to remain unbiased, but it doesn’t seem all that complicated to me.”

Cooksey Morning Edition There is also disagreement among legal experts.

“But I think everyone would agree that this is completely unprecedented and raises a lot of new questions,” he said.

“I think smart lawyers can always come up with complexities — that’s their job — and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tried to challenge it in some way,” Weintraub said.

But she added there were questions about where such a challenge could be filed and whether the parties filing it had standing to sue.

The FEC has long been plagued by partisanship and under-resourced resources that have prevented it from addressing these issues in a timely manner: Election violations are often punished years later, and financial penalties are often relatively small compared with the millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars spent on elections.

“The chances of all this happening and being resolved by November are, realistically speaking, not very high,” Weintraub said.

On that point, Weintraub and Cooksey seem to agree.

“One of the problems with this process is it takes time,” Cooksey said. Morning Edition“There’s not much time left until the election.”