FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub Says Trump is Trying to Remove Her From Commission
President Donald Trump is seeking to remove Federal Election Commission Chair Ellen Weintraub from her post, according to a letter posted on social media by the longtime commissioner on Thursday.
The letter, dated Jan. 31, is brief, simply stating that Weintraub is “hereby removed as a Member of the Federal Election Commission, effective immediately.”
According to Weintraub, who has served on the bipartisan commission since 2002, the president’s order isn’t legally valid. In a post on the social media site X, she insisted that “there’s a legal way to replace FEC commissioners” and “this isn’t it.”
“I’ve been lucky to serve the American people & stir up some good trouble along the way,” Weintraub wrote. “That’s not changing anytime soon.”
Weintraub’s term as a commissioner expired in 2007, though she has continued to serve on the board. A commissioner can only be removed once a successor is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and Trump has not yet named a potential replacement for Weintraub.
A spokesperson for the White House did not immediately respond to C&E’s request for comment.
Trevor Potter, a Republican former FEC chair who now serves as the president of Campaign Legal Center, said that Trump is free to nominate a successor to Weintraub, given her long-expired term in office. But Potter said that Trump’s attempt to simply remove Weintraub ran afoul of the law.
“It’s contrary to law that he has instead opted to claim to ‘fire’ a single Democratic commissioner who has been an outspoken critic of the president’s lawbreaking and of the FEC’s failure to hold him accountable,” Potter said in a statement.
In addition to nominating Weintraub’s replacement, Trump can also name a successor to fill the seat of former FEC Chair Sean Cooksey, who resigned his seat on the commission last month to take a job in Vice President J.D. Vance’s office.
