The commission disclosed the disruption in an email to campaign compliance firms on Monday night, saying a “bad actor” was attempting to breach its systems, according to a Reuters report published Tuesday.

“We have a bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems. As a result, we’ve had to temporarily shut down our web facing services,” an FEC electronic filings officer said in the email.

The shutdown has prevented campaign groups from submitting mandatory 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports, which provide information on expenditures by political groups and other organizations supporting specific campaigns.

“At this time, the FEC’s electronic filing system is currently offline and our IT staff are actively working to restore service,” the FEC said in a statement provided to Silicon UK.

The disruption comes at a critical stage of the election cycle, when timely disclosure of campaign spending is essential to public scrutiny of political financing.

Meanwhile, the scale of election spending highlights the growing financial power behind American politics, with approximately $11.21 billion already spent on advertising and future advertising reservations for the midterm elections, according to AdImpact.

The figure has surpassed the previous record of $11.2 billion set in 2024, underscoring the enormous sums being poured into campaigns as political divisions deepen across the United States.

Although the FEC said users can still search its website for previously submitted reports, the filing outage has interrupted the submission of new disclosures at a particularly sensitive moment.

A system status message indicated that the filing service had been offline since around 10 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, or 2 a.m. GMT on Tuesday, after campaign finance officers reported being unable to submit mandatory reports.

As the Trump administration faces mounting domestic and international challenges, the incident adds to concerns over the reliability of the systems responsible for overseeing campaign finance during an election cycle marked by record expenditure and intense political competition.