An administration official acknowledged that a meeting of President Donald Trump's commission before the end of the year is “unlikely.” | Kevin Dietsch/Pool/Getty Images Judge: Trump voter fraud commission on ice till next year

A commission that President Donald Trump tasked with investigating his own unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud won’t meet again this year, according to court records, fueling more questions about the panel’s future and its viability.

In an order Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said a Justice Department attorney told the court Friday that the President’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity “will not meet in December.”


Federal rules require such committee meetings to be announced 15 days in advance, except for emergencies, so no meeting seems feasible this month,

Asked about the lawyer’s reported statement Monday, the White House declined to comment on the record.

However, an administration official acknowledged that a meeting of the commission before the end of the year was “unlikely.”

“It’s correct to say we have not noticed another meeting at this time, and it’s unlikely to happen before the end of the year,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The official would neither confirm nor deny reports that the panel might close up shop without further meeting.

The commission’s charter calls for meetings “approximately every 30-60 days.” The panel’s last session took place in New Hampshire on Sept. 12.

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Born from Trump’s eye-popping claim made days after he took office that between 3 million and 5 million people voted illegally in last year's election, the commission has been mired in controversy from the outset. Democrats pleaded with him to drop the issue, but in May the president issued an executive order creating the commission and naming Vice President Mike Pence as the panel’s chairman and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach as vice chairman.

The commission has also been hit by a slew of lawsuits, some triggered by an effort that Kobach launched to collect voter rolls — including partial Social Security numbers and criminal conviction data — from every state. Kobach said the data request was aimed solely at assembling records that are already public under state law, but critics warned of privacy risks from compiling such information.

The panel has also been beset by other problems.

Kobach and New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner clashed over alleged nonresident voting in that state. A panel staffer was arrested on child pornography charges. And last month, one of five Democrats on the 12-member commission, former Arkansas State Rep. David Dunn, died unexpectedly during heart surgery.

Earlier this month, one of the other Democrats on the panel, Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, filed suit against the commission, alleging that he was being frozen out of deliberations and denied access to records. He noted that a conservative group in Minnesota claimed to have been invited to testify at a December meeting of the panel, although he was never informed that such a meeting was planned.

Kobach has denied Dunlap’s allegations, calling them “baseless and paranoid.”

It was during a status conference on Dunlap’s suit Friday that a Justice Department attorney indicated no further meetings were planned this year. Officials have also conceded that the flood of litigation and the other incidents have impeded the commission’s progress.

The administration official who spoke to POLITICO on Monday said that despite the lack of a planned meeting, panel staff were hard at work.

“Commission staff are still working through materials obtained in the previous meeting,” the official said. “We made members aware of this. Some members have gone ahead and said there should be a meeting scheduled, but there’s still a lot of information we’re going through.”

