Daily Beast: The Nation’s Top Election Official Has Overdosed on the Trump Kool-Aid

Trey Trainor may not be a household name. But as head of the Federal Election Commission, he has oversight of the campaign finance system that underpins federal elections. And in recent days, he’s been floating baseless election fraud conspiracy theories sourced entirely to a Trump attorney who believes the Fed is out to tank the American economy in order to enrich George Soros.

“I do believe that there is voter fraud taking place” in key states in the 2020 presidential election, Trainor told the conservative outlet Newsmax last week. The allegations were quickly seized upon by the president’s allies, including his son Donald Trump Jr., in their efforts to overturn the results of an election that experts both in and out of the federal government have said was remarkably secure and reliable. ……

Campaign finance experts recoiled at Trainor’s apparent embrace of the dubious allegations. “My biggest concern with Commissioner Trainor is his partisanship, and to the extent that overlaps with the conspiracy theorizing about election fraud, that’s a concern,” said Paul Seamus Ryan, the vice president of litigation with the group Common Cause, in an interview on Tuesday. …

“The focus should be on the business of the FEC and the suitability of these nominees to do that important work, not on crazy conspiracy theories about nonexistent election fraud,” said Common Cause’s Ryan. But, he added, “nothing would surprise me.”