A new lawsuit is demanding a much deeper-dive investigation of Russia's 'coordination' with the 2016 Trump campaign

• Two groups have accused the FEC of failing to act on a complaint against Russia and the Trump campaign.
• The nonprofits want more disclosure of Russia's spending and activities to influence the 2016 election.

A pair of nonprofit advocacy groups sued the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday, alleging that the federal agency has failed for the past five years to act on a complaint against the Russian government and 2016 Trump presidential campaign alleging violations of campaign finance law.

The two groups, Campaign for Accountability and Free Speech for People, argue in their federal lawsuit that the FEC's delay has potentially deprived the American public of information that wasn't revealed during Special Counsel Robert Mueller's two-year investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election.

In the lawsuit, filed in Washington, DC, federal court, the groups noted Mueller's work and separate congressional investigations but said those inquiries, "pursuing different angles for different purposes and with different mandates, have not focused on bringing transparency to campaign financing — the FEC's mandate."

"Even today, despite multiple investigations, critical information about the money spent in the 2016 election is still unknown," the groups said in their complaint. "How much did the Russian Federation spend? When and for which efforts did it make the payments? How much (and which) of that spending was "coordinated" with the Trump campaign?"

Mueller's office found no evidence of coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign but documented 10 episodes of potential obstruction of justice by the former president.

In their 2016 complaint with the FEC, Campaign for Accountability and Free Speech for People alleged that the Russian government failed to disclose its spending on that year's presidential election and argued that at least some of that spending was "coordinated" with the Trump campaign. Under federal election law, the term "coordination" has a looser meaning that does not require any formal agreement or collaboration but can occur "in cooperation, consultation or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of" a candidate or an affiliated political entity.

Campaigns are required to disclose the dates, amounts and purposes of any such "coordinated" spending, said Ron Fein, the legal director for Free Speech for the People.

"Even five years after the 2016 election, we still lack basic information as to what happened with the Russian government and the Trump campaign's coordination," Fein told Insider.

"The FEC has not covered itself in glory in recent years with its investigations, but it is the agency that Congress has tasked with investigating violations of federal campaign finance law."

A history of inaction and lawsuits

The FEC, which enforces civil campaign finance laws, has the authority to seek civil penalties with a five-year statute of limitations period. But as a bipartisan agency, the FEC is often at ideological odds with itself and frequently deadlocks on high-profile matters.

A spokesperson for the commission declined to comment on the lawsuit, which is just the latest in a long history of litigation over alleged inaction.

As recently as last month, the good-government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington alleged in federal court that the commission had failed to enforce campaign finance law with a group accused of illegally hiding the source of millions of dollars in super PAC spending.

Earlier in the year, a onetime Republican candidate for Congress sued the FEC over its alleged failure to act on her complaint against Twitter for not verifying her account on the social media platform.

Fein said he hopes that the FEC will respond to the lawsuit by taking up an investigation that could shed more light on Russia's spending in the 2016 presidential election and the Trump campaign's compliance with disclosure laws.

"A lot of people think that these matters have been put to rest by past investigations, including the Mueller investigation," he said. "But when you look more closely at it, you see that through a combination of strategic decisions and perhaps the rush to complete the investigation … the Mueller investigation failed to connect certain dots, failed to ask certain questions, and as a result there are still unanswered questions that make it hard for us to move forward as a country, not knowing what happened in 2016."