Trump team files FEC complaint over transfer of Biden's $91M to Harris campaign: 'Brazen money grab'

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Former President Trump’s campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Tuesday, accusing President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of violating campaign finance laws by transferring his $91 million in fundraising cash to her new campaign. 

Biden bowed out of the presidential race on Sunday following weeks of calls for him to leave following a shaky debate performance. 

The president endorsed the vice president, his running mate on the Democratic ticket, to succeed him as the party's 2024 standard-bearer, and transferred his millions of dollars in campaign cash over to her. 

But the Trump campaign argued in the complaint, first reported by The New York Times and obtained by Fox News Digital, that Harris is "seeking to perpetrate a $91.5 million dollar heist of Joe Biden’s leftover campaign cash."

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Former President Trump’s campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday, accusing President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of violating campaign finance laws by transferring his $91 million in fundraising cash to her new campaign.  (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images; Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

David Warrington, who serves as general counsel for the Trump campaign, called the act "a brazen money grab that would constitute the single largest excessive contribution and biggest violation in the history of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended."

"Kamala Harris is in the process of committing the largest campaign finance violation in American history and she is using the Commission’s own forms to do it," the filing concluded. "The Commission must not and cannot sit idly by while one candidate takes nearly one hundred million dollars from the authorized committee of another, in violation of the Act and the will of the donors who gave the money in the first place."

Included in the complaint are Biden, Harris, "Biden for President (aka Harris for President) and Keana Spencer, as treasurer, for flagrantly violating the Act by making and receiving an excessive contribution of nearly one hundred million dollars, and for filing fraudulent forms with the Commission purporting to repurpose one candidate’s principal campaign committee for the use of another candidate."

President Biden endorsed Vice President Harris to run for the Democratic ticket in his place and transferred his millions of dollars in campaign cash over to her.  (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images))

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The complaint argues that if "Kamala Harris were a candidate for something in 2024, federal law requires her to have filed a Statement of Candidacy and for her name to have appeared in the name of her authorized committee. But Kamala Harris’s name does not appear in the name of her purported authorized committee, ‘Biden for President,’ and, until Sunday, no Statement of Candidacy existed for her. Then Sunday, rather than filing her own Statement of Candidacy, she merely altered Joe Biden’s to replace his name with hers. There is no mechanism under the Act for one individual to end another’s federal candidacy by simply amending the other’s Form 2. Moreover, in that purported amended Form 2 Harris designated ‘Biden for President’ as her principal campaign committee and then renamed it. Altering a document submitted to a federal agency is a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1519.3." 

The Harris campaign told Fox News Digital that the complaint was "baseless."

David Warrington, who serves as general counsel for the Trump campaign, called the act "a brazen money grab that would constitute the single largest excessive contribution and biggest violation in the history of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended." (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

"Team Harris will continue to build on our more than 250 coordinated offices and more than 1,300 coordinated staffers across the battleground states – just like we built on the $240 million cash on hand that we had at launch this week, raising $100 million in our first 36 hours and signing up 58,000 volunteers," the statement read.

"Republicans may be jealous that Democrats are energized to defeat Donald Trump and his MAGA allies, but baseless legal claims – like the ones they’ve made for years to try to suppress votes and steal elections – will only distract them while we sign up volunteers, talk to voters, and win this election."

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Harris’ team broke a record with their more than $100 million fundraising haul since Biden dropped out on Sunday and Harris launched her candidacy. Biden had seen much of his fundraising dry up following his difficult debate on June 27. 

In her first speech since Biden dropped out, Harris spoke to Biden campaign staffers on Monday, assuring them she would need the team to stay on to run her campaign with the election little more than 100 days away on Nov. 5. 

Fox News' Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report