The Federal Election Commission on Thursday issued a unanimous decision dismissing a complaint by U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign accusing
The Washington Post of “illegal corporate in-kind contributions” to then-Vice President Kamala Harris‘ failed Democratic presidential campaign.

The campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets.org
reported that the FEC commissioners voted 4-0 to reject the Trump team’s allegation that the Post bought social media ads in a bid to boost news articles critical of the Republican nominee.

Lawyers for the
Post—which is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, who donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and sat with fellow oligarchs Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg at the January swearing-in, and who has cracked down on criticism of the president and his Cabinet at the paper—called the Trump campaign’s allegations “speculative and demonstrably false.”

As OpenSecrets.org’s Dave Levinthal wrote:

Trump’s campaign had
alleged that The Washington Post was conducting a “dark money corporate campaign in opposition to President Donald J. Trump” and used “its own online advertising efforts to promote Kamala Harris’ presidential candidacy… Trump’s campaign also argued that the Post was not entitled to what’s known as a “press exemption” for political content because it was “not functioning within the scope of a legitimate press entity.”

The FEC general counsel’s office disagreed and advised the commissioners to dismiss the complaint based on “an internal ‘scoring criteria’ for agency resources,” Levinthal explained, adding that “the
Post ‘appears to have been acting within its legitimate press function and thus its activities are protected’ by federal election laws’ exemption for overtly journalistic activities.”

“Given that low rating and the apparent applicability of the press exemption, we recommend that the commission dismiss the complaint, consistent with the commission’s prosecutorial discretion to determine the proper ordering of its priorities and use of agency resources,” the office advised.