13th District Republican Congressman Rodney Davis is requesting the Federal Election Commission’s inspector general on Thursday to investigate the agency’s leader for allegedly using her position to publicly tarnish President Donald Trump including making multiple media appearances in which she referred to the president as a danger to democracy.
Davis is the ranking Republican on the House Committee on House Administration. Davis sent a 4-page memo last Thursday asking FEC Inspector General Christopher L. Skinner to investigate FEC Chair Ellen L. Weintraub for using government time and resources for partisan purposes. Davis has accused Weintraub of violating federal ethics rules by improperly using the power of her office to further her political agenda. Davis wrote that Weintraub had improperly requested that the president share with authorities evidence of voter fraud that he said happened in New Hampshire during the 2016 Presidential Election. Trump alleges that people were bused from a neighboring state and allowed to vote. In doing so, the alleged illegal voting cost him the state’s 4 electoral college votes.
Weintraub has been especially critical of President Trump’s entreaties of foreign governments in connection with U.S. elections, citing that it was illegal to do so. Weintraub was also critical of President Trump’s creation of an Advisory Commission of Election Integrity in May 2017 after the New Hampshire claims, calling his claims “conspiracy theories.”
Because of her ostensible bias against President Trump, argued Davis, Weintraub “should publicly admit her political differences with the President, disclose her conflict of interest, and at the very least, recuse herself from voting on Matters Under Review involving the President,” Davis wrote in the memo.
Responding to Davis’ memo via Twitter, Weintraub wrote she would “not be silenced” and that the “independence of the United States Federal Election Commission will not be compromised.”