How Republicans will try to hold Biden’s campaign war chest hostage

Republican officials appear to be preparing for legal threats to stop Kamala Harris from inheriting a massive campaign cash pile from Joe Biden after he ended his presidential campaign.

Within hours after Biden endorsed his vice president for the Democratic nomination, campaign officials notified the Federal Election Commission the Biden-Harris campaign is now “Harris for President.”

The Harris campaign now has access to more than $90 million in cash on hand, according to government records. Her candidacy also opened the floodgates from small- and large-dollar donors to the campaign and Democratic causes, with the Harris campaign raising $81 million within 24 hours of its launch.

But GOP lawyers and officials are now arguing the campaign can’t simply switch things up, signaling a legal battle to stop the cash flow.

Moments after Biden announced he was ending his re-election campaign, Donald Trump-appointed FEC chair Sean Cooksey posted an excerpt of campaign finance law that requires contributions to a candidate for the general election be refunded or redesignated if that candidate doesn’t run.

“I think it’s really complicated, is the short answer,” Cooksey told NPR on Monday.

“What he’s attempting to do is to give his entire committee, the cash and all the assets, over to another person,” he said. “I think it’s gonna have to go through a process, through the FEC … I expect, there’s probably going to be challenges to that at the agency, and probably in the courts as well.”

GOP-allied campaign finance lawyer Charlie Spies also claimed that both Biden and Harris would have to be nominated by the Democratic Party at next month’s convention before handing off the funds.

“Biden can’t transfer his money to Harris because it was raised under his own name, and there is no legal mechanism for it to have been raised jointly with Harris before they were their party’s nominees,” Spies told The Washington Post.

But Harris’s name was already on campaign finance documents as Biden’s running mate, and “because Biden and Harris share a campaign committee, the Vice President and her running mate can continue using the campaign’s existing funds for the general election if she is on the Democratic ticket as either the presidential or vice-presidential nominee,” according to the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan elections advocacy group.

The excerpt of the regulation Cooksey cited also applies only to a campaign’s funds raised towards the general election — not the money raised during the primary elections period, which is still technically ongoing. The party has not formally nominated a candidate.

Even other GOP-aligned lawyers are skeptical.

“The reasonable interpretation is that the Biden campaign committee is a shared one between Harris [and] Biden, and perhaps uniquely so because they are incumbents,” according to Steve Roberts, former general counsel to Vivek Ramaswamy, speaking to The Hill.

Former FEC commissioner Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow with right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, has also refuted arguments that Harris can’t tap into the funds, noting that the Biden-Harris campaign was the “principal campaign committee” for both Biden and Harris.

The Biden-Harris 2024 campaign amassed a sizable war chest which, combined with other Democratic-supporting organizations and political action committees, has more than $200 million at its disposal, according to government filings.

What happens to that campaign cash will only get sticky if Harris doesn’t end up the nominee, according to campaign finance analysts.

In that event, which appears unlikely, as Harris has not drawn any challengers and has received endorsements from key Democratic officials and state delegates, money could be refunded to donors, transferred to the Democratic National Committee or state parties, or folded into a new super PAC that supports the new nominee.

Right-wing legal groups have been eager to slow down any Democratic momentum in the event that Biden left the race, as Trump’s campaign has been preparing for something of a landslide victory against the president.

A legal campaign from the Heritage Foundation has been preparing to file lawsuits in key swing states to keep Biden’s name on the ballot, which legal analysts told The Independent is virtually impossible, as the Democratic Party hasn’t even formally named a nominee. There would be a tight timeline to make amendments vulnerable to legal challenges if Harris or another candidate who gets the nomination backed out of the race after the convention.

“So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate, and quits the race,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday, among several posts complaining about his new Democratic challenger.

“Now we have to start all over again.”