WASHINGTON, DC- When the Washington Post announced last month that it would not be endorsing a presidential candidate this cycle, some on the right applauded the move, while some on the left lost their collective minds. Some even pushed left-leaning subscribers to cancel their subscriptions to the outlet.
However, according to RedState, the paper’s pronouncement that it was “returning to [its] roots” may have been a red herring.
According to the Trump campaign, the Post is using online advertising to promote Harris’s candidacy, which would violate federal election law under the auspices of “in-kind” political contributions to Harris.
On Friday, the Trump campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, asserting precisely that and explained their rationale regarding the complaint:
The Trump-Vance Campaign has filed a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against The Washington Post for illegal in-kind contributions to Harris for President.
According to reports, the Post is using its advertising powers to promote pro-Kamala and anti-Trump coverage to voters in the final days of the election. While they declined to endorse her publicly, they have endorsed her in the dark; so much for “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
The mainstream media has become nothing more than pro-Kamala propaganda. The Democrat machine must be held accountable.
The full complaint, filed by the Dhillon Law Group, raised several key points, RedState reported:
I write on behalf of Donald J. Trump for President 2024, Inc. As described below, there is reason to believe that the Washington Post violated the Federal Election Campaign Act (“FECA” or “Act”) and Federal Election Commission (“FEC” or “Commission”) regulations by making illegal corporate in-kind contributions, in violation of 52 U.S.C. § 30118, or, in the alternative, unreported last-minute independent expenditures, in violation of 52 U.S.C. § 3014(g)(1). Therefore, we call upon the Commission to immediately investigate expenditures by The Washington Post.
…
-
Factual Background
The Washington Post recently announced it would not endorse a presidential candidate, a decision the Post’s owner defended on the basis that “Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election.”
Yet, on October 30, 2024, the news website Semafor published a report titled “Washington Post pays to boost stories critical of Trump as subscribers flee.” The Semafor article discloses that, starting “on Monday,” October 28, 2024–just over a week before Election Day–The Washington Post has “aggressively ramped up its paid advertising campaign, boosting dozens of articles related to the election.”
As Semafor reported, this is no simple commercial marketing campaign: “While the [Post[ articles about Vice President Kamala Harris were relatively neutral in tone”--if not flattering–”and focused on her…digital strategy, her policy proposals, and her chances of winning…the articles that the Post paid to highlight about [President] Trump told a different story.” In fact, Semafor reported, the Washington Post has paid to “boost multiple critical articles” of President Trump through this sudden, last-minute advertising campaign.
The FEC complaint follows closely after President Trump filed a lawsuit against CBS for the “60 Minutes” fiasco, where the program’s producer appeared to place a doctored answer into the program over Harris’s answer to a question about Israel. The Trump campaign demanded that CBS News release a full interview transcript, which the network has refused to do. The answer to the question in a trailer for the episode containing the usual amount of Harris word salad was completely different from the answer broadcast during the program.
The suit alleges that the network engaged in election interference by selectively editing Harris’s answer to the question. Trump’s attorneys said the suit was filed due to “CBS's partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference through malicious, deceptive, and substantial news distortion calculated to confuse, deceive, and mislead the public.”
The edits, Trump’s attorneys allege, were done in order to “attempt to tip the scales in favor of the Democratic Party as the heated 2024 Presidental Election–which President Trump is leading–approaches its conclusion.”
Comments