WASHINGTON -- The lawyer for President Barack Obama's reelection campaign has asked the Federal Election Commission to force Karl Rove's non-profit organization Crossroads GPS to register as a political committee and disclose all of its donors.

The Obama campaign's complaint, first reported by The New York Times and obtained by The Huffington Post, came from campaign legal counsel Bob Bauer and stated that a recent appeals court decision requires the government to explicitly define what constitutes a political committee. The complaint was sent to both the FEC and to Crossroads GPS president Steven Law and founder Karl Rove.

"The FEC may, and by statutory mandate should, apply a test to the activities of organizations like Crossroads that will inevitably reveal them to be 'political committees', not charities, because their 'major purpose' is to elect candidates to federal office," wrote Bauer, citing a June 12 ruling by the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in the case of Real Truth About Obama v. FEC. Crossroads GPS meets the definition of a political committee under the FEC's tests, the letter said. These include the content of the group's advertisements and the founding of the organization by a coterie of Republican Party operatives, including former White House political director Rove.