Former FEC Chair: FEC Complaints ‘Absolutely’ Biased Against Republicans

Ann Ravel, the former Democrat chair of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) who wanted to regulate Internet speech, said that complaints brought before the commission are "absolutely" biased against Republicans.

Ravel made the comments during an interview with the alumni magazine of U.C. Berkeley, her alma mater where she is now a lecturer at its law school.

When asked if there were any way that the number and types of cases that come before the FEC could be biased against Republicans, Ravel said yes.

"Absolutely. The cases have come primarily from watchdog groups, and most of those groups are on the liberal side," Ravel said. "However, they have also brought cases against Democratic committees. In fact, we had a case during the primary for the 2016 election that was brought by one of those groups against the Hillary Clinton campaign. The Democrats on the commission voted to investigate it. The Republicans voted to dismiss the case entirely."

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a "watchdog" organization that is often deemed "nonpartisan" by the media despite being a liberal group, is one such group that regularly files complaints to the FEC against Republicans. David Brock, the liberal operative and Clinton ally who founded Media Matters for America and a number of other groups, formerly chaired CREW.

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