We’ve been hammering on Obama for his little public/private financing reversal. What somehow got missed was the fact that McCain did pretty much the same thing during the primary season. Only he probably broke the law along the way.
It seemed like everyone forgot, but no! The DNC is there, and this time they’re actually doing something. Namely, suing McCain for breaking campaign finance laws.
Well, the Democratic National Committee is trying to change that by filing a lawsuit in US District Court in DC to force the Federal Election Commission to investigate McCain’s decision to opt in the public matching funds system for the primaries, secure a loan based on those public funds, and then withdraw from the system after becoming the GOP front-runner. McCain, though, never actually received those public funds before opting out.
“The chairman of the FEC,” the lawsuit states, “has already advised Sen. McCain that he is not free to withdraw unilaterally from his agreement with the FEC and to ignore the legal requirements of the Matching Payments Act, without the FEC’s approval. Yet Sen. McCain cannot obtain such approval, because he already violated a key condition for dispensing with the Agreement by which he entered the matching funds program: he has pledged matching funds as collateral for a loan to his campaign.”
Let’s see where this one goes.
