Feds Accidentally Reveal Another Trump Investigation - Ring of Fire

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Reporters at The Daily Beast recently tried to get records via a FOIA about Donald Trump's election "recount" fund spending from the FEC, but the agency informed them that they couldn't turn over the records because the records were the subject of an FEC "enforcement matter." This means that the FEC has been conducting an investigation into Trump's spending that was previously not public knowledge, and little is known about what they are looking for. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The Federal Elections Commission accidentally revealed by responding to a FOIA request that they're actually conducting at least some kind of minor investigation, at the very least, into Donald Trump's finances, specifically the recount fund that he had raised millions of dollars for following the 2020 presidential election. So here's what happened. As the Daily Beast Reports, you had a group that sent a FOIA request asking for specific documents about payments made from the recount funds set up by Donald Trump with his MAGA packs. The F e C responds to the extent that the records you requested concern an ongoing f e c enforcement matter. We can neither confirm nor deny that any such records exist, which means on that particular matter, at least in some way, shape, or form, the F FEC is investigating just what the hell is going on here. Now, elections experts have warned everybody, they, they put this in the Daily Beast.

They said, cool, your Jets, folks, this does not mean that Trump is definitely under investigation. There's all kinds of different things that enforcement matter could mean. It could mean they're just looking at it because one of the vendors, uh, could be a part of something totally unrelated to this. It could be that Donald Trump was spending money that he should not have been spending on something else. We don't know. There's a lot of gray area here, and typically these experts said, these so-called enforcement matters tend to end with a whimper. But we won't know until, of course, we know, which is one of the most frustrating things about this story. But here's what's happening following the 2020 election, as we all know, Donald Trump raised millions and millions and millions of dollars and millions of that was actually put into a special recount fund. Now, this fund is separate from all of the other money Trump raised.

Trump's allowed to spend that money on whatever he wants, as long as it's not his own political campaign. He can spend it at his resorts, he can spend it doing rallies, he can spend it on flights, he can give it to other candidates. He can't spend it on himself. But that recount fund that is a little different. In fact, it was described by these experts as kind of the wild, wild west. You're really only supposed to spend it if you need to finance a recount of your election results. But based on available information, it appears that Donald Trump spent millions of his recount fund paying a company called two M to gather up documents that had been subpoenaed from him.

In fact, uh, two M made 6.2 million from about 40 megapack payments, and 4.6 million of that specifically came from that recount fund based on what the investigators have seen so far. So instead of taking this money that he told people, I'm raising it for a recount, he instead pays it to two M because he says, Hey, look, I got a lot of subpoenas. They want these documents you guys go through and you find the documents, get 'em all together and let's send them out. Because we all know how much Donald Trump loves to comply with subpoenas and turn over documents, right folks? Which is why this story doesn't quite smell right. Donald Trump has fought every subpoena he's ever been hit with.

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1. another investigation

25 months and counting