Daily Beast Reporter Smears Student Trump Group
Peter D'Abrosca
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In a stellar display of hard-hitting investigative journalism on Tuesday, Lachlan Markay of The Daily Beast released a smear of Students For Trump.
“A political group founded by Trump supporters in college has ignored repeated efforts by federal regulators to collect information on its political activities and financial backers,” said Markay’s article titled “Pro-Trump College Group Won’t Tell the Feds What the Hell It’s Doing.”
In his piece, Markay lists Students for Trump as a political action committee. The organization once filed for PAC status in 2016, but shortly thereafter terminated it.
Ryan Fournier, 21-year-old college student and founder of Students For Trump told Big League Politics that becoming a PAC was a brief thought that never materialized, as the process was too complicated for a grassroots student organization without a team of legal experts. He said that a member of the group filed paperwork to terminate the PAC, and that he was under the impression that it had been successfully terminated.
In any case, under FEC guidelines, no political organization, whether it is officially a PAC or not, is required to file paperwork with the FEC unless it raises or contributes more than $5000 to a political campaign.
According to Fournier, Students for Trump has not come remotely close to meeting that threshold.
“I pay $10 per year out-of-pocket to host the website,” he said. “I think I spent 20 bucks on 250 bumper stickers once, but we never sold any of those,” he added.
Students For Trump has never officially contributed to President Donald J. Trump. Their website has a contribution link that re-directs the site visitor the Trump’s official contribution page, which is also not a violation of FEC rules.
As it turns out, the FEC is not really interested in Students For Trump after all.
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