Overview
- The Federal Election Commission said its electronic filing system has been offline since about 10 p.m. ET on Monday and that agency IT staff are working to restore service.
- An internal email viewed by Reuters and reported by multiple outlets said a hacker or hackers tried to breach FEC systems, prompting the temporary shutdown of web‑facing services.
- The outage is preventing required 24‑hour and 48‑hour campaign finance reports from being filed, which will limit public visibility of late spending by super PACs and outside groups.
- The FEC said past filings remain searchable on its site, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI were contacted but had not immediately issued public comments.
- The FEC does not run elections so voting should not be affected, though the disruption comes as this cycle sees record outside spending and could trigger forensic checks and federal investigations.