Washington Post accused of breaking campaign finance regulations

One of the big legacy media controversies in recent days was the announcement by the Washington Post, which long has promoted Democrats for president, was withholding its endorsement this year.

Owner Jeff Bezos said it was one step on the path, he hoped, to start regaining the trust of readers, a metric that has plunged even below that of trust in Congress recently.

But now the Trump campaign has filed a complaint against the publication with the Federal Election Commission over “advertising efforts Republicans argue amount to illegal electioneering.”

It is the Federalist that documented the newest scheming.

“On Thursday, the Dhillon Law Group filed a complaint on behalf of former President Donald Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, that claims the Post is engaged in ‘a dark money corporate campaign’ to boost Vice President Kamala Harris,” the report said.

The charge is that the Post, according to a report from Semafor, “pays to boost stories critical of Trump…”

According to the Federalist, Semafor reported, “the paper’s desperate efforts to save readership after losing hundreds of thousands of subscribers in the aftermath of an announcement that the editorial board would not endorse Harris.”

That would include, the headline said, that the Post “pays to boost stories critical of Trump.”

It said, “On Monday, the paper aggressively ramped up its paid advertising campaign, boosting dozens of articles related to the election. While the articles about Vice President Kamala Harris were relatively neutral in tone and focused on her innovative digital strategy, her policy proposals, and her chances of winning next week, the articles that the Post paid to highlight about Trump told a different story.”

The “‘multiple articles” that the Post boosted about Trump, the report said, were about his campaign rhetoric, alleged misstatements, and other negatives.

“The advertising campaign, according to the Trump campaign complaint filed with the FEC, meets the legal qualifications of ‘in-kind corporate contributions’ to Harris for president,” the report said.

The scandal also was cited by officials with the Center for American Rights, which told the FEC, “We’re days from an election, and the Washington Post is pouring cash into social media advertising that exclusively helps one candidate for president and denigrates another.

“That sort of last-minute spending is not protected by the FEC’s press exemption; the Post needs to come clean and comply with the law.”

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance also commented: “The Washington Post might as well be a propaganda outlet of the Democratic Party. I don’t care, frankly, whether the editorial page endorses Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. I care about whether the journalists are lying about Donald Trump or lying about Kamala Harris. And frankly, they’re lying a lot in the negative direction about my running mate, and they’re lying a lot in the positive direction about Kamala Harris.”