The campaign of hardcore progressive Rep. Maxine Waters of California got hit hard after the results of a recent investigation into its activities revealed damaging information.
The Federal Election Commission said the longtime congresswoman’s 2020 campaign committee, Citizens for Waters, violated a number of campaign finance laws in a batch of documents released last Friday. The FEC accused the group of “failing to accurately report receipts and disbursements in calendar year 2020,” “knowingly accepting excessive contributions,” and “making prohibited cash disbursements.”
Waters’ campaign has agreed to pay a $68,000 fine and to “send its treasurer to a Commission-sponsored training program for political committees within one year of the effective date of this Agreement.”
“Respondent shall submit evidence of the required registration and attendance at such event to the Commission,” the document continued.
According to Fox News, Citizens for Waters accepted excessive campaign donations from seven people for a total of $19,000 in 2019 and 2020, according to the findings of the investigation. The maximum legal amount an individual can contribute to a candidate is capped at $2,800.
Court documents say the committee did ultimately offload the excessive donations, but in an “untimely” manner. Waters’ campaign committee was also found to have “made four prohibited cash disbursements that were each in excess of $100, totaling $7,000.”
Documents also say the campaign committee “contends that it retained legal counsel to provide advice and guidance to the treasurer and implemented procedures to ensure the disbursements comply with the requirements of the Act.”
In a clear attempt to avoid fines and other potential consequences, Leilani Beaver, the lawyer who represented the campaign committee, sent the FEC a letter in 2024 saying these violations were simply “errors” and “were not willful or purposeful.”
This isn’t the first time the California Democrat has run afoul of the public.
An investigation done by Fox News in 2023 discovered that Waters’ campaign paid her daughter a staggering $192,300 for a “slate mailer” operation that allegedly functioned between January 2021 and December 2022.
Slate mailer operations are highly controversial. For those unfamiliar with them, they feature a list of candidates and give voters the impression these individuals are all together on the issues or political party, when that’s not often the truth.
Despite their lack of accuracy, they are quite effective.
Reportedly, this was only one sum Waters paid her daughter for supposed campaign work.
A complaint was also made against the Watters campaign in 2018, stating that they had accepted illegal campaign contributions. However, the FEC tossed out the case in a 5-1 vote.
