Maxine Waters campaign to pay $68K for violating campaign finance laws

Progressive California Rep. Maxine Waters’ campaign has agreed to pay a $68,000 fine after an investigation found it violated multiple election rules.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) said the longtime House lawmaker’s 2020 campaign committee, Citizens for Waters, ran afoul of several campaign finance laws in a tranche of documents released Friday.

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 going to court.

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Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, was accused of violating campaign finance rules. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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.

Citizens for Waters had accepted excessive campaign contributions from seven people totaling $19,000 in 2019 and 2020, the investigation found, despite the maximum legal individual contribution being capped at $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 investigation focused on Rep. Maxine Waters’ 2020 campaign finances. (REUTERS/Mike Segar)

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, who was listed as Citizens for Waters’ attorney, sent the FEC a letter last year that maintained the campaign finance violations were “errors” that “were not willful or purposeful.”

Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, has served in Congress since 1991.

The new movements in the probe were first reported by OpenSecrets.

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It is not the first time, however, that Waters has generated public scrutiny.

In 2023, a Fox News Digital investigation found that Waters’ campaign paid her daughter $192,300 to pay for a “slate mailer” operation between Jan. 2021 and Dec. 2022.

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It was reportedly just one sum out of thousands that Waters had paid her daughter for campaign work.

A complaint that Waters’ campaign had accepted illegal campaign contributions in 2018 was overwhelmingly dismissed by the FEC in a 5-1 vote.

Fox News Digital reached out to Beavers, Waters’ congressional office and Citizens for Waters for comment.