Government Integrity Project

NLPC “blows the whistle” on government officials and interest groups engaged in questionable activities. NLPC has filed formal Complaints with a variety of authorities and regulators, including the Federal Election Commission, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Congressional Ethics Committees.

NLPC supports government integrity in two additional ways: by promoting the First Amendment as the basis for campaign finance reform, and by promoting use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

NY Post: Feds Investigating AOC Campaign Finances

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

From the New York Post today by Mary Kay Linge and Jon Levine:

The Feds are looking into possible campaign finance misdeeds by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff and lead rainmaker, who suddenly resigned Friday, federal sources told The Post.

The inquiry centers on two political action committees founded by Saikat Chakrabarti, the top aide who quit along with Ocasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent,the sources said. Trent left to join the congresswoman’s 2020 re-election campaign.

The two PACs being probed, Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, were both set up by Chakrabarti to support progressive candidates across the country.

But they funneled more than $1 million in political donations into two private companies that Chakrabarti also incorporated and controlled, according to Federal Election Commission filings and a complaint filed in March with the regulatory agency.

Also from the article:

The complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center, … Read More ➡

Rep. Thornberry Protected Predatory Lenders While Wife Worked for Lobbyist

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

From the Washington Examiner today by Alana Goodman:

A powerful, long-serving Republican congressman blocked a federal crackdown on predatory lenders targeting military members while his wife was working for a firm that lobbied for one of the nation’s top lender trade associations, according to financial disclosures.

Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas was chairman of the House Armed Services Committee when he pushed to delay new restrictions under Military Lending Act that sought to protect military service members from predatory lending practices. A study conducted by the Department of Defense found that 11% of military members had been subjected to predatory loans, leading to personnel discharges at a cost to the department of $14 million a year.

Under the rules, lenders, banks, and credit card companies were required to cap interest rates at 36% annually and are prohibited from providing continual payday loans or requiring service members to submit to mandatory … Read More ➡

Mueller Must Answer Questions About His Conflict of Interest

Posted on by NLPC Staff

Tomorrow, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller will testify before the House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee about his two-year investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election.

While the Justice Department yesterday ordered Mueller to stay within the confines of his report, there are unanswered questions about Mueller’s conflict of interest that have not been answered but are the subject of a pending FOIA lawsuit by the National Legal and Policy Center.

President Trump has repeatedly said Mueller has a conflict for a number of reasons, such as a dispute with membership fees at Trump’s Virginia golf club, his relationship with fired FBI Director James Comey, not getting appointed by Trump to head the FBI, and his law firm’s work with the Clinton Foundation. Here’s what Mueller should be asked:

  1. On May 16, 2017, you had an interview with President Trump in the White House about the vacancy
… Read More ➡

Rep. Rashida Tlaib Is a National Security Risk

Posted on by Carl Horowitz

Lost amid the uproar over President Trump’s rebuke of four radical “women of color” in the House of Representatives is the possibility that he was entirely justified. For months, these freshmen lawmakers, hyped by the media, have used their office to undermine enforcement of our nation’s laws, especially those related to immigration, labeling anyone who disagrees with them as a “racist.” One of these pugilists, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., stands out as an especially nasty piece of work.

A lawyer by training, Tlaib, born in 1976, occupies the Detroit-area congressional seat held for decades by John Conyers. Like the other three members of her vapid, publicity-hungry “squad” – Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) – she makes no secret of her loathing for America’s identity and laws. Indeed, as a Muslim born to Palestinian parents, Tlaib proudly identifies with their foreign identity. “I’m more Palestinian … Read More ➡

Maryland AG Asked to Investigate Cummings’ Nonprofit

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

From the Washington Examiner, by Alana Goodman:

A watchdog group is asking the Maryland attorney general to investigate whether Rep. Elijah Cummings and his wife used a charity for improper self-enrichment, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by the Washington Examiner.

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, which leans conservative, filed the complaint on Monday against the Center for Global Policy Solutions, a nonprofit organization founded by Cummings’ wife, Maya Rockeymoore.

The complaint asked Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh to investigate the financial relationship between the Center for Global Policy Solutions and Rockeymoore’s for-profit consulting firm, Global Policy Solutions LLC.

The similarly named entities shared an address, phone number, projects, funding sources, and had a cost-sharing arrangement that raises questions about a “potentially improper financial benefit to Ms. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings and her husband, Representative Elijah Cummings,” the complaint asserts.

Click here to read the rest … Read More ➡

Court Dismisses Frivolous ‘Emoluments’ Suit Against Trump

Posted on by Carl Horowitz

Donald Trump’s enemies have gotten creative lately in examining his past for evidence of lawbreaking. But their creativity has its limits. In Richmond, Va. this morning, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Appeals Court for the Fourth Circuit unanimously dismissed a lawsuit filed two years ago by the attorneys general for Maryland and the District of Columbia accusing Trump of illegally profiting from his continuing financial interest in the Trump International Hotel, located blocks from the White House. The suit alleged that he violated the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause barring presidents and other federal officials from accepting gifts or money from foreign and domestic government officials without congressional approval. The claims, wrote Judge Paul Niemeyer, were too “attenuated” and “abstract” to merit legal standing.

The Emoluments Clause (actually three separate clauses) of the U.S. Constitution is one of our primary safeguards against political corruption. The most relevant portion here, … Read More ➡

Senator Hassan Has Not Notified Victims of Data Theft

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

From the Daily Caller by Luke Rosiak, including comment by NLPC’s Tom Anderson:

Sen. Maggie Hassan’s computer system was hacked in what prosecutors called the “largest data theft in Senate history,” yet there is no evidence she informed constituents who may be at risk of identity theft as a result — despite being one of the most vocal advocates for laws requiring hacking victims to do just that.

The New Hampshire Democrat’s former IT aide Jackson Cosko was sentenced to four years in prison June 19 for pilfering essentially all the office’s data by paying another Hassan staffer to help him break into the office late at night. One of Hassan’s key issues in the Senate has been requiring companies to notify Americans whose personal information they fail to protect. Hassan sponsored a federal law to that end, but it has not passed.

A 2006 New Hampshire law enacted while … Read More ➡

Federal Employees Union Tries to Block Migrant Deportations

Posted on by Carl Horowitz

It takes no great insight to recognize there is a rapidly worsening security crisis along our southern border. Remarkably, a union representing the federal employees who handle this crisis is enabling it. Last Wednesday, American Federation of Government Employees Local 1924 filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco in support of a lawsuit to block enforcement of the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). Since its launch in January, the program by the end of June had temporarily returned to Mexico more than 15,000 asylum seekers who had been detained at U.S. ports of entry. MPP, reads the complaint, is “fundamentally contrary to the moral fabric of our Nation.” Such high-minded rhetoric ignores the fact that these migrants attempted to enter the U.S. illegally.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the many photos of “caravans” of thousands … Read More ➡

Rep. Elijah Cummings Drums Up Business for His Wife

Posted on by NLPC Staff

From the Daily Wire by Ryan Saavreda:

Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings (MD), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, is facing accusations that he is using his position in Congress to financially benefit his wife, whose charity may have gained “illegal private benefit” from his committee activities.

Cummings’ wife, Maya Rockeymoore, is the chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party and she “runs two entities, a nonprofit group called the Center for Global Policy Solutions and a for-profit consulting firm called Global Policy Solutions, LLC, whose operations appear to have overlapped, according to the IRS complaint filed by watchdog group the National Legal and Policy Center,” The Washington Examiner reported, adding that Rockeymoore’s charity “received millions from special interest groups and corporations that had business before her husband’s committee and could have been used illegally.”

One of Global Policy Solutions’ clients is AARP, which testified before Cummings’ committee earlier this year … Read More ➡

IRS Complaint: Cummings Wife Paid Twice For Same Work

Posted on by Peter Flaherty

Today, the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) filed an amendment to its May 20 Complaint to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regarding Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, and the Center for Global Policy Solutions (CGPS), a nonprofit 501(c)(3) group that she heads. Cummings is the wife of Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

The amendment is prompted by a news story on June 5, 2019 in the Daily Caller by Andrew Kerr titled “Elijah Cummings’s Wife Used Her Charity to Pay For-Profit Company, Documents Show.”

Maya Rockeymoore Cummings is also the only principal in Global Policy Solutions, LLC (GPS, LLC), a for-profit limited liability corporation that NLPC alleged in its May 20 Complaint to be “impermissibly entwined” with the nonprofit CGPS.

According to CGPS financial statements for 2014 and 2015 cited in the Daily Caller article, GPS, LLC received a fee of 5% … Read More ➡