James E. Trainor III

On September 14, 2017, Trump nominated Trainor to be a member of the Federal Election Commission for a term expiring April 30, 2023.[3] Trainor's nomination languished in the Republican-controlled Senate for years,[5][6] with Trump re-nominating him twice (in 2019 and 2020).[5][7][8] During his FEC confirmation hearings, he refused to recuse himself from matters related to the Trump campaign.[9]

On May 19, 2020, the Senate voted to invoke cloture on his nomination by a 50–43 vote[10] and later that day confirmed his nomination by a 49–43 vote.[11] Trump's nomination of Trainor broke a precedent; traditionally, presidents have made nominations to the FEC in pairs (simultaneously nominating one Republican and one Democrat); Trump's decision to nominate Trainor alone was criticized by Democrats.[9]

Trainor's confirmation gave the FEC a quorum, with four of the six commission seats filled (two Republicans, one Democrat and an independent who mostly sides with the Democrat).[9] This theoretically allowed the FEC to move forward on a large backlog of enforcement matters that had effectively halted FEC activity for months during a presidential election year.[9] However, the FEC was still expected to deadlock frequently (as the commission had done for more than a decade) along party lines, since many actions of the commission require a unanimous vote.[9]

On June 18, 2020, Trainor was elected as chair for the remainder of 2020, with Steven T. Walther selected as vice chair.[12]

In interviews in September 2020 with the Religion News Service, as well as Michael Voris of the right-wing Catholic website Church Militant, Trainor said that churches could endorse political candidates, contrary to common understandings of the Johnson Amendment, which bars tax-exempt nonprofits from endorsing political candidates.[13] He justified this by pointing to Trump's 2017 executive order that the amendment should not be enforced.[13] In the same interviews, Trainor called the separation of church and state a "fallacy" and accused Catholic bishops of "hiding behind" the church's nonprofit status to avoid involvement in the 2020 U.S. elections, which Trainor called a "spiritual war."[13] FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub disagreed with Trainor's statements on the Johnson Amendment (saying that the amendment remains law and "cannot be undone with an executive order") and took issue with his depiction of elections as "spiritual wars."[13]