“On the Holmes Front,” with Frank Holmes
One of the biggest mysteries in America is how somebody can enter politics broke and retire a millionaire.
Sure, congressmen have top-notch perks and a stellar benefits package, but their salary is $174,000. Plenty of people in your hometown make that much.
But somehow not only do the denizens of D.C. manage to retire with millions in the bank—so do their families.
How does that happen?
One of the most unethical politicians in Washington just shone a light on the whole thing… and it turns out her business partner is none other than former Senator and President-in-Waiting Kamala Harris.
Rep. Maxine Waters of California has paid her own daughter more than $1 million… and tens of thousands of that came from Kamala.
Congresswoman Waters has given her daughter, Karen Harris, a cool $1.13 million, according to records from the Federal Election Commission.
Waters jas made 163 separate payments to Karen and her daughter’s firm, Progressive Connections, between July 2014, and last December.
The checks ranged from $146 (reimbursement for 2015 “Xmas Party,” Waters said) to two payments for $42,000 each in just a few months.
How do they earn all that cash? Clogging your mailbox in what critics say is a scam that straddles the limits of the law.
Maxine Waters sends out what’s called a “slate mailer”—a piece of mail that has her picture and tells you to vote for a list of Democratic candidates she endorses.
But if the candidates don’t pay up, they don’t get listed… which makes it sounds like a bribe.
Waters blew the lid off her own scheme in 2004, when she told the FEC that “federal candidates who do not pay a proportionate share of the expenses”—that is, who don’t pony up the dough to be part of her junk mail—“will not be included.”
That’s just a fancy way of saying this is a pay-to-play deal. But as incredible as it sounds, the whole thing is legal as far as the government’s concerned.
The congresswoman took her case to the FEC, saying that her campaign should be able to accept donations from other politicians. Waters said she wasn’t asking candidates to pay her for her endorsement—she just wanted them to “reimburse” her for printing costs.
The FEC ruled in her favor in 2004—and the money came rolling in for her whole family, to the tune of more than a million dollars.
Guess who one of the people who paid Waters’ asking price is? None other than Kamala Harris, who paid for Waters’ stamp of approval twice, making a total of $63,000 in payments to the Waters family business.
Federal law limits people to making $2,700 in donations to a candidate…but Waters’ side hustle cut a loophole through the law big enough to put her family on Easy Street.
However, her family might have gotten a little too greedy. Legal experts say that people can make contributions to her campaign—but not organizations, like the California Democratic Party, which paid Waters $35,000 to promote Kamala Harris. And 2020 presidential failure Michael Bloomberg shelled out $25,000 to Waters on behalf of former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Waters even saw that her son, Edward, made more than $100,000 from the mailers.
Despite her shady family scandals, Waters “parades as an advocate of ethics,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the conservative watchdog organization, the National Legal and Policy Center, which has highlighted Waters’ dirty dealings for years.
“Maxine Waters found an old provision and turned it into a cottage industry,” said one of Boehm’s colleagues at NLPC. But at more than a million dollars, it’s more like a McMansion Industry.
No wonder Donald Trump campaigned on the need to “Drain the Swamp”—and no wonder Maxine Waters was one of the most unhinged members of Congress in opposing him. She arguably incited violence against anyone in his Cabinet while he was president.
Now, even after he’s out of office, Maxine Waters said she wants Trump tried for “premeditated murder”!
And now that her old business partner, Kamala Harris is VP, Maxine Waters can breathe easy, pump fellow Democrats for shady cash donations, and watch her family live it up in style.
That’s how you strike it stinking, filthy rich in politics—first the politicians pay you, then you pay your family, and then the whole country pays for electing these frauds.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”