The campaign of progressive California Rep. Maxine Waters has agreed to pay a $68,000 fine after an investigation revealed that it broke many election regulations.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) stated in a batch of documents that the longtime House lawmaker’s 2020 campaign group, Citizens for Waters, violated many campaign finance regulations.
The FEC accused Citizens for Waters of “failing to accurately report receipts and disbursements in calendar year 2020,” “knowingly accepting excessive contributions,” and “making prohibited cash disbursements,” according to one document that appears to be a legally binding agreement that allows both parties to avoid court.
Waters’ committee agreed to pay the civil fine as well as “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 said.
According to the inquiry, Citizens for Waters took inappropriate campaign contributions from seven persons totaling $19,000 in 2019 and 2020, even though the maximum allowed individual contribution is $2,800.
The committee offloaded those excessive donations, albeit in an “untimely” fashion, the document said.
Waters’ campaign committee also “made four prohibited cash disbursements that were each in excess of $100, totaling $7,000,” the FEC said.
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.”
Leilani Beaver, Citizens for Waters’ attorney, wrote to the FEC last year, claiming that the campaign financing infractions were “errors” that “were not willful or purposeful.”
Waters, the leading Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, has been in Congress since 1991.
OpenSecrets was the first to report the fresh movements in the inquiry.
Waters has previously drawn public attention for a very similar thing.
In 2023, a Fox News Digital investigation discovered that Waters’ campaign paid her daughter $192,300 for a “slate mailer” operation between January 2021 and December 2022.
