FEC wants Trump to explain $1.3 million worth of 'mistakes' in campaign report

In a rare act of doing something, the Federal Elections Commission has identified serious mistakes in Donald Trump's last campaign finance report, is demanding an explanation, and has made the problem public.

The FEC determined that the Trump campaign accepted close to 1,100 donations, which amounted to roughly $1.3 million, that violated one of a handful of campaign finance laws.

In some cases, the Trump campaign accepted donations from groups that had not registered properly with the FEC. But in the majority, donors blew right past legal donation limits, the commission wrote in a letter to the Trump campaign sent Monday.

Larry Noble of the Campaign Legal Center said the FEC letter is fairly routine.

The FEC is demanding that the Trump campaign refund any donations that came from unregistered organizations or surpassed legal donating limits. Because that will happen. The FEC is essentially broken and has been for years, thanks to the refusal by Republican members of the commission to break ranks and investigate violations. It’s not at all clear that the commission would actually take action against Trump, because they don’t do that anymore.

But it's also possible that one or more of those Republicans is just a little horrified by what's happened to their party, and is about to happen to the nation. While elected Republicans in Washington are falling all over each other to ingratiate themselves with the president-elect, non-elected Republican officials seem to be less enthused.