Today, the Democratic National Committee will file a lawsuit against Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in U.S. District Court.

Not waiting for federal regulators and hoping to draw negative attention toward McCain, Democratic party officials want an investigation into whether McCain violated election laws by withdrawing from public financing.

McCain signed up for $5.8 million in federal funds for the primary campaign at a time when his candidacy was struggling financially and staff was crumbling. McCain reversed that decision after re-surging to frontrunner status in the Republican primary and gave up the money so he could avoid strict spending limits for the rest of his campaign.

DNC will also file a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission accusing the agency of not reviewing McCain’s decision to opt out of the system. They want a judge to either order the FEC to begin an immediate review, or allow the Democratic Party to file a lawsuit against McCain’s campaign challenging his decision.

Tom McMahon, the party’s executive director, said:

there is a compelling public interest in determining whether Senator McCain agreed to participate in the matching funds program so he could get a loan for his campaign, then violated the terms of that agreement so he could ignore the spending cap and raise unlimited money from lobbyists and special interests.”

The DNC is seeking civil fines or an order barring McCain from exceeding spending limits.

Democrats filed an initial complaint with the FEC in February. Under federal rules, the party usually must wait 120 days before filing a lawsuit.

The Republican National Committee has called the lawsuit “frivolous”.

It has only been 49 days since the DNC’s initial meritless complaint to the commission was filed, and thus we expect this lawsuit to be thrown out at the first opportunity,” said spokesman Alex Conant.

View entire DNC legal complaint after the jump >>

Read this doc on Scribd: DNC Complaint

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