FEC Slams Donald Trump Campaign With Huge, 265-Page List Of ‘Excessive, Prohibited, Impermissible’ Donations

The Federal Elections Commission on Friday put the Donald Trump presidential campaign on notice that it needs to quickly clean up its act when it comes to taking campaign donations. The commission hit the “Donald J. Trump For President” campaign — which is based at 725 Fifth Ave. in New York City, an address better known as Trump Tower — with a massive, 265-page document, readable online at FEC.gov. The document lists thousands of contributions the FEC calls “excessive, prohibited, and impermissible.”

The list mainly consists of dozens of names of individuals who donated to Trump repeatedly to the point where, according to the FEC letter, their total donation exceeded the maximum permitted amount by any one person per election cycle, which is $2,800. Listed in alphabetical order, the letter starts by listing 65 donations of $50 each made by “Addison, Walter,” since 2017 — a total of $3,250 donated to Trump for his 2020 presidential campaign. That same individual attempted 14 further donations for a total of 76, but those were returned for reasons not made clear in the FEC document. The example of Addison is only one of the numerous repeat donors to the Trump campaign.

The FEC letter gives Trump until September 12 to respond and offer explanations for the excessive contributions, after which the FEC threatens “an audit or enforcement action” against the campaign.

Donations to Trump, or to any candidate running for federal office, are public record and may be accessed online by any member of the public through the Federal Election Commission online database. Names, amounts of each contribution, and the donor’s place of employment are all legally available to anyone.

But the FEC Trump campaign letter comes just four days after Trump and other Republicans reacted with outrage when Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro posted the names of Trump donors residing in his San Antonio district via Twitter.

In the tweet, Castro included information available from the public FEC database that showed names and employers of 44 San Antonio residents who maxed out their donations to Trump at the $2,800 level. On his own Twitter feed, the top Republican in the House, California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, immediately accused Castro of “targeting and harassing Americans because of their political beliefs.”

Castro replied via Twitter that he had tweeted public information and that he had not “targeted or harassed” any donor.

Instead, Castro said he was highlighting the fact that the Trump campaign had used thousands of dollars in donor money to pay for Facebook ads that, as The Inquisitr has previously reported, describe Hispanic immigrants as an “invasion” of the United States.

“Donald Trump has put a target on the back of millions,” Castro wrote in a subsequent Twitter post. “How about I stop mentioning Trump’s public campaign donors and he stops using their money for ads that fuel hate?”