The Trump campaign is vowing to fight a complaint from a watchdog group alleging an unusually bold and broad violation of campaign finance law. But it might not have to fight too hard, because the matter is now before an essentially shuttered Federal Election Commission.
The allegation formally lodged Tuesday by the Campaign Legal Center, which advocates for tighter money-in-politics rules, is that President Trump's reelection operation paid almost $170 million to companies affiliated with one-time campaign manager Brad Parscale and other campaign operatives — but did not disclose the intended recipients of the money, as the law requires.
While efforts to obfuscate campaign spending details are not uncommon, as candidates from both parties clamor for every tactical advantage, what the CLC described in its complaint as "laundering the funds" by Trump's team seems unprecedented in size and scope.
The CLC is still pursuing, for example, its similar complaint filed with the FEC four years ago, alleging the Hillary Clinton campaign paid a law firm knowing the real recipient was going to be the opposition research firm Fusion GPS, which was investigating Trump's ties to Russia. The amount at issue, however, was less than $1 million.
That complaint has moved at a snail's pace mainly because the six-member FEC, the sole regulator of money in national politics, was in total partisan deadlock for almost a decade ending last summer — at which point the agency was essentially shut down because its membership shrank to three, one shy of a quorum. It reopened for a month this summer after the Senate confirmed a Trump nominee, Trey Trainor, then fell into limbo again as soon as Republican commissioner Caroline Hunter resigned last month.
Even under normal circumstances, it would take the FEC many months to resolve such allegations — and that's even if there were four votes to do something.
With Senate Democrats delaying a vote on her proposed replacement, deregulatory campaign finance advocate Allen Dickerson, the only thing likely to happen before the election is that agency bureaucrats formally accept the Trump campaign's response in the next month.
The CLC could bypass the agency altogether and turn the complaint into a federal lawsuit if there's no movement at the FEC for four months — but that would be several weeks after the election. By that point the complaint might be pointless as a practical matter, if the president is defeated, but campaign finance advocates may want to press it nonetheless as a matter of precedent-setting principle.
Federal law requires candidates for president and Congress to disclose all payments above $200, including to subcontractors closely tied to the campaign. The 82-page complaint says the Trump campaign and the Trump Make America Great Again Committee unlawfully evaded these rules by funneling money through Parscale Strategy but mainly through another firm over which he has significant influence, American Made Media Consultants.
The CLC complaint says some of the money was to keep secret some payments to Parscale, who was replaced as campaign manager this month by Bill Stepian, while other money was quickly passed along for vendors and advisors including the maker of the campaign app, Phunware, as well as both Lara Trump, the wife of Eric Trump, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr.
The Trump "scheme flagrantly violates the transparency requirements mandated by federal law, and it leaves the public in the dark about where the campaign funds are actually going," the watchdog group's president, former FEC Chairman Trevor Potter, said Wednesday. "And this secrecy could potentially disguise other campaign finance violations, but we don't know, because the campaign isn't disclosing these routed payments.".
Spokesman Tim Murtagh said the campaign had done nothing wrong and so would contest the allegations vigorously. "The campaign complies with all campaign finance laws and FEC regulations," he said.
The last time a campaign was sanctioned for concealing payments appears to be eight years ago, when Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota was fined for paying an Iowa Republican official for his presidential endorsement but masked the money.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.