News/Commentary

Trump fires FEC leader who insists she’s not leaving ‘anytime soon’

February 7, 2025 | | Print Article

The Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) disgruntled chair is refusing to step down after being fired by President Donald Trump.

FCC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat, announced in a tweet on Thursday that, despite receiving a termination letter from Trump, she intends to remain in her post.

“Received a letter from POTUS today purporting to remove me as Commissioner & Chair of [the FEC],” she wrote. “There’s a legal way to replace FEC commissioners — this isn’t it. I’ve been lucky to serve the American people & stir up some good trouble along the way. That’s not changing anytime soon.”

Look:

As seen above, the tweet included a copy of Trump’s letter.

“You are hereby removed as a Member of the Federal Election Commission, effective immediately,” the letter dated Jan. 31st read.

Weintraub later doubled down in a statement to The New York Times, saying, “There’s a perfectly legal way for him to replace me, but just flat-out firing me, that is not it.”

The Times notes that the supposed legal way would involve Trump nominating a replacement and that replacement being confirmed by the GOP-led Senate.

Weintraub also suggested that Trump is targeting her because of the public statements she’s made about all the FEC complaints that were previously filed against his presidential campaigns.

“There have been dozens of complaints filed against the president,” she said. “I have pointed that out. I’ve written about this. So I’m not really surprised that I am on their radar.”

Weintraub is backed in her disobedience by former FCC commissioner and chair Trevor Potter, a Republican,

“Congress explicitly, and intentionally, created the F.E.C. to be an independent, bipartisan federal agency whose commissioners are confirmed by Congress,” he tweeted late Thursday. “As the only agency that regulates the president, Congress intentionally did not grant the president the power to fire F.E.C. commissioners.”

The rest of the thread can be seen below:

Notice what Potter wrote about how Weintraub “has been an outspoken critic” of Trump over the years. This is true.

In 2019, she accused Trump of making “baseless” claims about voter fraud and alleged that these claims were “damaging to our democracy.”

“I think it is damaging to our democracy to spread information like that if there is no proof,” she told CNN at the time.

Weintraub was originally appointed to the FCC in 2002 by then-President George Bush. Though her term in office expired after five years, nobody ever appointed a successor, and so she’s been an “acting” commissioner ever since — including through Trump’s first term in office.

Over on Twitter/X, Weintraub’s tweet was met by an army of Trump supporters shouting for her to get lost.

Look:

Vivek Saxena
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