On August 3, Mark Everson filed a formal Complaint with the Federal Election Commission, asking that the FEC rule that Fox News is violating federal regulations by excluding him from the second-tier Republican presidential debate set for August 6. Everson was the IRS Commissioner between 2003 and 2007, and also served in high federal executive office during the Reagan administration. He has been campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination since March 2015. He is one of the 18 candidates listed in the Republican National Committee’s straw poll. Yet he is the only one of the 18 who has not been invited into either one of the Fox August 6 debates.

Fox News originally said candidates had to be at 1% in the polls to join the second-tier debate, but Fox eliminated that rule on July 27. That left no objective criteria for that debate. Yet federal regulations say debate sponsors must use “pre-established objective criteria.” See this story on Hot Air.