The Democratic National Committee said it feared that one of Trump’s executive orders gave him too much control over future elections.
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali on June 3 dismissed a lawsuit by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) that claimed that President Donald Trump would someday harness the power of the executive branch to interfere in upcoming elections.
The suit was brought in response to an executive order by Trump that said the president and the attorney general would have the final say on legal questions regarding executive branch employees.
“The President and the Attorney General’s opinions on questions of law are controlling on all employees in the conduct of their official duties,” the executive order reads.
The DNC said this means Trump would exercise too much control over the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and might use that power to cripple his political opponents.
The FEC intervened in the suit on behalf of Trump, stating that it would remain neutral. It is composed of six members and can never have more than three members from the same political party.
During a hearing on April 9, FEC attorney Jeremy Newman said the FEC’s stance on election law has not changed since the order was issued and that any future decisions it made would continue to reflect the commissioners’ deliberations, not those of the president.
He characterized the DNC’s legal action as premature and said the FEC retains its independence.
“Something else needs to happen, and we know for sure that ‘something’ has not happened,” he said.
Dan Fox, attorney for the DNC, said that “the FEC would prefer to bury their heads in the sand” and pretend there is no problem with the executive order, which he said was already having a “chilling effect” on the DNC’s day-to-day operations.
Ali seemed skeptical of those claims, warning the plaintiffs not to “manufacture standing based on fear of future harms.”
“At bottom, the committees’ claim and stated basis for an injunction is that their dealings with the FEC have changed or will change, and governing precedent requires them to point to a concrete basis for this conclusion,” he said in his written opinion.
“They have not done so here.”
