Maxine Waters accused of charging fellow Democrats heavily for campaign endorsements and funneling funds to her daughter's PR firm
Complaints have been filed against Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters with the Federal elections Commission over how her campaign raises money and how those funds reportedly made their way to her daughter's PR firm. The complaints were made by a conservative watchdog group in July accusing her campaign of charging fellow Democrats if they wanted to be included in her "sample ballot mailer", which she she mails out to over 200,000 households.
A $35,000 payment was made from the California state central committee to Waters' campaign, according to the complaint by the conservative National Campaign Legal Center. The complaint further states that the funds were earmarked for Sen. Kamala Harris, reported Daily Mail.
It was later revealed that she was listed on the sample ballot slate sent out by Waters.
By campaign finance laws, anyone who wants to make a contribution to a member of Congress cannot pay out more than $2,700. However, sample ballots could be seen as a way for campaigns to make larger contributions towards candidates.
Another complaint states that the Waters' campaign transferred $750,000 since 2004 in payments to her daughter Karen Waters' Progressive Connections.
Such a practice allows politicians in California to steer large contributions towards her campaign, and thus indirectly subsidize work towards her daughter's firm, which produces the said mailers.
Tom Anderson of the National Legal and Policy Center told Fox News: "Maxine Waters found an old provision and turned it into a cottage industry."
“She is going to be re-elected no matter what,” he said. “She comes knocking and other politicians in California to say, ‘do you want my endorsement,’ because she knows they don’t want her opposing them.”
Anderson says her rising profile in opposing Trump likely gives her more clout among the Democrats.
“If you don’t pay to be on her slate, then maybe you’re one of Trump’s people,” Anderson said. “A local politician, like a judge, does not want to be on her bad side.”
As long as actual work is performed, congressional rules do not disallow lawmakers from hiring their family members for campaign work.
This time, the focus of the conservative watchdog group complaint is the $35,000 remitted towards Waters' campaign in order to include Harris in the mailer when she was running for a Senate seat.
Being first elected to Congress in 1990, Maxine Waters has never lost an opportunity to urge her followers to harass members of President Donald Trump's administration.
Earlier this month, she took aim at the president once again. “Already, you have members of your Cabinet that are being booted out of restaurants,” she crowed as the crowd erupted, “who have protesters taking up at their house, who say, ‘No peace, no sleep. No peace, no sleep!'”
She went on, “We’re going to win this battle because while you try and quote the Bible, Jeff Sessions (she blames the attorney general for enforcing immigration law) and others, you really don’t know the Bible. … God is on OUR side! On the side of the children, on the side of what’s right!”