Freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) may have run afoul of campaign finance laws by paying herself tens of thousands of dollars from her campaign funds during the midterm elections.
Federal Election Commission filings show that the congresswoman paid herself $17,500 from the Rashida Tlaib for Congress fund weeks after the 2018 election was complete. While political candidates are allowed to pay personal living expenses from campaign donations, FEC regulations require these payments to cease after the general election is over.
Mo’ money, mo’ problems
The FEC provisions are clear: “If the candidate wins the primary election, his or her principal campaign committee may pay him or her a salary from campaign funds through the date of the general election, up to and including the date of any general election runoff. If the candidate loses the primary, withdraws from the race, or otherwise ceases to be a candidate, no salary payments may be paid beyond the date he or she is no longer a candidate.”
In May, Ms. Tlaib took a leave-of-absence from her job at the Sugar Law Center, a Detroit-area welfare and social justice organization, and started drawing a salary from her campaign. She took a total of $28,000 in $3,000 to $4,000 installments from the campaign committee up until Nov. 6.
Up until the midterm election, Tlaib’s actions were perfectly legal. After the race was over, however, the Democrat paid herself $2,000 on Nov. 16 and took an eyebrow-raising $15,500 payment on Dec. 1.
Breaking all the rules
Seeking to get to the bottom of these potentially illegal campaign payments, the Washington Free Beacon spoke to a government elections lawyer with knowledge of federal election laws. Perplexed by the payments, the source explained:
On its face, it looks like the $2,000 payment on November 16 might be for the candidate’s salary for the first two weeks of November. But given that the election occurred on November 6—i.e., part-way through the first November pay period—I am surprised that this last payment wasn’t prorated. In other words, Tlaib stopped being a candidate halfway through this period, but it appears that she kept collecting her full salary as if she was still a candidate throughout the full first two weeks of November.
The December payment was even more suspicious, according to the elections law expert:
The $15,500 payment is interesting. It’s not 100% clear what she’s doing, but what she may have done is to low ball her earlier payments for political purposes (at $2k), knowing full well that she would make up any difference at the end by giving herself a lump sum payment. That would let her skirt negative publicity, of the sort that Alan Keyes generated when he paid himself a sizable salary. An after-the-fact, lump sum payment cuts against the purpose of the rule, which is to help the candidate pay for daily living expenses while campaigning.
The Soros connection
Ms. Tlaib, who infamously pledged to “impeach the motherf ****er,” or take down President Donald Trump, also vastly deflated a donation she received from Democratic mega-donor George Soros. Tlaib reported receiving just $68,307 for a “Leadership in Government Fellowship” in 2017, although documents from Soros’s Open Society Foundation (OSF) show that she was paid $85,307.
“Rashida Tlaib was awarded a Leadership in Government fellowship from the Open Society Foundations in the fall of 2016,” Jonathan Kaplan, a spokesman for Soros, told the Free Beacon after Tlaib decided to run for Congress. “Her project: to focus on increasing the civic participation of disenfranchised urban communities of color. When Ms. Tlaib informed us that she was planning to run for Congress, we mutually agreed to suspend her fellowship and no further payments were made.”
But Tlaib didn’t just underreport her salary. She also failed to disclose the OSF as the source of her income, an oversight that Kendra Arnold, the executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, called “problematic.”
FEC regulations require that candidates “Identify the source by naming the organization, corporation, or other entity making the payment.” In total, Tlaib collected $225,180 from Soros’s organization throughout 2016 and 2017, according to OSF records.
Whether it was ignorance, ineptitude or conspiracy that compelled Tlaib to break the rules, she owes her constituents and donors an explanation. Otherwise, it won’t be long before voters are calling for her expulsion from the House of Representatives.
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