by Frank Holmes, reporter
At a time when inflation has spikes and the economy is tied up in knots thanks to problems with the supply chain, Americans can be grateful they have Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., chairing the House Financial Services Committee. If there’s one thing she knows, it’s how to improve a family’s finances—at least, when it comes to her family.
Waters paid $81,650 from campaign donations to her daughter, Karen Waters, over just the last fiscal year, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) campaign finance records reviewed by the New York Post. That includes $74,000 in campaign funds through September 2021, according to Fox News — more than $20,000 to over the last three months alone.
And that’s just the tip on a huge iceberg made of cold, hard cash.
During the 2020 election cycle—which is 2019 and 2020—Waters gave her daughter $250,000.
In 2018 alone, Karen Waters made $291,022 on the family grift.
“Waters’ daughter has received over $1.1 million for her work on her mother’s campaigns since 2003,” according to Fox News… but that’s actually only about half of the scandal.
In 2004 The Los Angeles Times reported that Waters’ relatives had already received more than $1 million over the eight years before then, from campaigns and businesses associated with Waters.
So, actually, the figure is closer to $2 million or more.
What is Waters paying her daughter all this money to do? The fees pay for “slate mailer management” fees and “GOTV,” or “Get Out The Vote” services… but really, it’s just for one service: Her daughter sends out what’s known as a “slate mailer.”
What’s that? Maxine Waters sends out a piece of mail with a list of the candidates and issues that he supports, telling her voters to vote for these people, too. But she doesn’t do it to boost her fellow Democrats or to become civically engaged.
She charges candidates tens of thousands of dollars to list their name; if they don’t pay up, they don’t get her endorsement on the mailer. For instance, California’s own Kamala Harris paid a total of $63,000 to get her endorsement twice.
Waters is reportedly the only candidate who used the ethically questionable measure in the 2020 election.
Until 2004, a group called L.A. Vote ran the Waters’ slate mailing operation—and it brought home a cool $1.7 million off the operation. Almost half-a-million dollars of that take, $450,000, went to the congresswoman’s daughter, Karen… but not to be left out, Maxine Waters’ son, Edward, brought in $115,000.
Her hubby made out OK, too. Thanks to the 2008 bailout, Waters was accused of earmarking $12 million in taxpayer money into a small, regional bank her husband invested in.
All of this may potentially be illegal. The FEC bans candidates from paying their family members—unless the relative is “providing bona fide services to the campaign,” and the salary can’t be “in excess of the fair market value of the services.”
But the FEC threw Waters’ shakedowns a major bone in 2004, when it ruled that Waters’ slate mailing operation was fine, because the candidates weren’t paying for Waters’ endorsement; they were just helping to cover the legitimate printing costs for the mailer.
Waters is so dirty that even the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) named Waters the “Most Corrupt Member of Congress” five times—in 2005, 2006, 2009, 2011, and 2017.
And she’s not the only far-Left Democrat cashing in. “Perhaps Waters gave the idea to Rep. Ilhan Omar?” wrote Bobby Burack for Outkick.com.
“Remember, from January 2019 to July 22, 2020, Omar’s campaign paid $1.6 million to E Street Group LLC. Does that group matter? Only to Omar’s husband, who owns the company and received nearly $2 million from his wife’s campaign.”
“Politicians keep telling the country that they are smarter than average Americans,” he wrote. “Well, politicians certainly have better personal financial strategies in place.”
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.”