Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) has been hit with a huge fine from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for violating campaign finance rules.
Officials at the FEC fined Crenshaw’s campaign committee $42,000 for failing to properly return more than $220,000 in illegal contributions.
According to the general counsel’s report, the FEC has “reason to believe” that the Crenshaw campaign and its treasurer, Paul Kilgore, violated federal law by “knowingly accepting excessive and prohibited corporate contributions”
Fun Fact: @DanCrenshawTX was recently fined by the FEC for illegally accepting excessive and prohibited corporate contributions totaling $223,460.
— Alex Bruesewitz 🇺🇸 (@alexbruesewitz) December 4, 2022
The report says: “The Committee received excessive and apparent prohibited contributions aggregating $223,460.26 for the 2020 primary and general elections from 125 individuals, one non-qualified political action committee, one qualified multicandidate committee, four corporations, and three LLCs.
“As an authorized campaign committee, the Committee was limited to accepting $2,800 per election from individuals, $5,000 from multicandidate committees, and was prohibited from accepting any corporate contributions.
“The Committee, however, received $223,460.26 in excessive and apparent prohibited contributions across four disclosure reports:
“…The Committee does not dispute its failure to make timely refunds but asserts that since the filing of the Referral, it has now refunded all excessive contributions.
“As described above, the Committee’s amended reports and recent filings disclose refunds for all but $3,216.50 in excessive contributions from individuals.
“The Committee asserts that it issued late refunds of the apparent prohibited contributions after it could not ascertain whether the source of funds was permissible.
“Since notification of the filing of the Referral, the Committee has disclosed the refunds of the apparent prohibited contributions on its amended reports.
“Therefore, the Commission finds reason to believe that Dan Crenshaw for Congress and Paul Kilgore in his official capacity as treasurer violated 52 U.S.C. §§ 30116(f) and 30118(a) by knowingly accepting excessive and prohibited contributions,” the report said.
