Following though on his promise, Bush sued the FEC today. No one’s sure why.
President Bush’s campaign asked a court Wednesday to force the Federal Election Commission to act on its complaints against anti-Bush groups spending millions of dollars in the presidential race, arguing that the FEC is failing to do its job.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, the campaign argued that the FEC is taking too long to address what the campaign calls illegal spending of corporate, union and big individual donations to influence the presidential race. Its lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction that would force the commission to act on its March complaint within 30 days. After that, the campaign could sue to block the groups’ activities through court action rather than relying on the FEC.
“To prevent these 527s from continuing to violate federal election laws, we have asked the federal court to step in and order the FEC to act,” said Tom Josefiak, general counsel for the Bush-Cheney campaign.
That would make sense, except the 527s aren’t violating federal election law and the lawsuit the campaign filed wouldn’t actually stop the 527s. This, plus it completely contradicts everything Bush said about 527s when he signed McCain-Feingold into law three years ago.
Other than that, it’s perfectly logical, in a Bush administration kind of way.
On a related note, it’s nice to see Bush complain about the clogged court system the same week he made it a little worse with a frivolous lawsuit of his own. Classic.