FEC Complaint: WaPo’s Paid Ads Violate Campaign Finance Rules

The Trump campaign filed a complaint against The Washington Post with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in response to advertising efforts Republicans argue amount to illegal electioneering.

On Thursday, the Dhillon Law Group filed a complaint on behalf of former President Donald Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, that claims the Post is engaged in “a dark money corporate campaign” to boost Vice President Kamala Harris.

“The Washington Post recently announced it would not endorse a presidential candidate, a decision the Post’s owner defended on the basis that ‘Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,’” the complaint reads. “Yet, on October 30, 2024, the news website Semafor published a report titled ‘Washington Post pays to boost stories critical of Trump as subscribers flee.’”

The Semafor article published Wednesday chronicled the paper’s desperate efforts to save readership after losing hundreds of thousands of subscribers in the aftermath of an announcement that the editorial board would not endorse Harris.

“Washington Post pays to boost stories critical of Trump as subscribers flee,” the headline read.

Semafor reported that eight days before Election Day, “On Monday, the paper aggressively ramped up its paid advertising campaign, boosting dozens of articles related to the election. While the articles about Vice President Kamala Harris were relatively neutral in tone and focused on her innovative digital strategy, her policy proposals, and her chances of winning next week, the articles that the Post paid to highlight about Trump told a different story.”

The Post “boosted multiple critical articles, including about Trump’s campaign rhetoric, his misstatements, his allies’ attempts to ‘energize him as he struggles to adapt to Harris,’ how his campaign damaged Springfield, Ohio, his fixation on the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter, how crowds leave his rallies early, and his questioning of the results of the 2020 election, among other stories.”

The advertising campaign, according to the Trump campaign complaint filed with the FEC, meets the legal qualifications of “in-kind corporate contributions” to Harris for president.

The latest push to maintain subscribers was also the subject of another FEC complaint, filed by the Chicago nonprofit Center for American Rights on Thursday.

“We’re days from an election, and the Washington Post is pouring cash into social media advertising that exclusively helps one candidate for president and denigrates another,” the group’s president said in a press release. “That sort of last-minute spending is not protected by the FEC’s press exemption; the Post needs to come clean and comply with the law.”

In his interview with Joe Rogan, released Thursday afternoon, Vance spoke about the turmoil overwhelming The Washington Post after the paper chose not to endorse a candidate for president this year.

“The Washington Post might as well be a propaganda outlet of the Democratic Party,” Vance said. “I don’t care, frankly, whether the editorial page endorses Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. I care about whether the journalists are lying about Donald Trump or lying about Kamala Harris.”

“And frankly,” Vance added, “they’re lying a lot in the negative direction about my running mate, and they’re lying a lot in the positive direction about Kamala Harris.”

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at [email protected]. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.