The Islamic State could finance candidates for national office if the feds fail to restrict more Americans from organizing in elections, a Democrat on the Federal Election Commission warned Thursday.
The point was made by Commissioner Ellen Weintraub during a debate on whether the employees of American subsidiaries of foreign companies should be allowed to organize political action committees on behalf of federal candidates. A proposed ban on the activity would apply to thousands of American workers at companies like Chrysler and Anheuser-Busch.
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“Let’s just pause it for a moment,” Weintraub told her colleagues during an open meeting of the commission. “[Say] three ISIS fighters who happen to have, come from families with money, decide to buy an interest or buy an entire company in the United States. Are you really comfortable with that company playing in our elections?
“You will be … willing to say, ‘Oh, that’s fine. These are American citizens who work for ISIS so that’s OK. They’re the ones who are going to,” she said before pausing and apparently addressing the commission’s Republican chairman, Matthew Petersen.
“I mean, that’s, you can shake your head if you want to, that would be OK under your theory I assume. And that’s, you know, maybe that sounds like a ridiculous example,” Weintraub said.
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“Yeah, it does sound like that,” Petersen replied.
Weintraub, who had earlier mentioned Moscow’s alleged hacking of the Democratic Party as a reason to believe Russia might try to get involved with the financing of American elections, continued. “You know, I don’t know how far removed it is from foreign governments who we know have state-owned enterprises that are buying up interests in the United States.”
A proposal to restrict people from organizing deadlocked, and therefore failed, 3-3. Petersen and his Republican colleagues, Lee Goodman and Caroline Hunter, voted against the motion, while Weintraub and fellow Democrats Ann Ravel and Steven Walther voted in favor.
