Salon: FEC goes after Donald Trump for more than 1,000 violations of campaign finance laws

In another complaint filed with the FEC last month, the Campaign Legal Center said it had reviewed undercover videos that reportedly show top members of a separate pro-Trump super PAC soliciting $2 million from a reporter acting as a Chinese national. Jesse Benton, the former chief strategist at Great America PAC and former top aide to Ron and Rand Paul, who was convicted in May on charges of campaign bribery, is reportedly seen on tape assuring the undercover reporter he believed to be a wealthy Chinese businessman that the contribution would remain anonymous, and that the Chinese benefactor was “going to get credit” for the $2 million.

The Campaign Legal Center’s Larry Noble explained that  despite the eye-popping number of apparent violations in Trump’s FEC filing, the letter from the agency is fairly routine. Both Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign and Barack Obama’s previous campaigns also received warnings that many of their donors, especially those online, had run afoul of spending limits. Noble adds, however, that the FEC’s comments on the Trump campaign’s coordination with unsanctioned super PACs may have gotten even the most partisan of Republican FEC members to take notice.