A top Democrat is facing criticism after reports of his wife possibly attaining “illegal private benefit” from his committee activities.
Maya Rockeymoore, the wife of Maryland rep. Elijah Cummings (D), is the chairwoman of the Maryland Democratic Party, and she also runs a charity that received millions from special interest groups and corporations that had business before Cummings’ committee.
The charity is being questioned for possibly being used illegally, which was highlighted in an IRS complaint that was filed by the ethics watchdog group National Legal and Policy Center.
Cummings is the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Rockeymoore also runs two entities, which include the Center for Global Policy Solutions and a for-profit consulting firm called Global Policy Solutions, LLC.
The operations seem to have overlapped as reported by the IRS complaint, which states that the arrangements were used to obtain “illegal private benefit.”
Tom Anderson, the director of the National Legal and Policy Center’s Government Integrity Project, which has been investigating Rockeymoore’s nonprofit arrangement, argued that her potential corruption is massive and that Rockeymoore declined to let the National Legal and Policy Center’s Government Integrity Project view her nonprofit’s most recent public financial records.
Detailing the severity at hand, Anderson expressed that “when a powerful chairman of a committee of the House of Representatives has a wife that is bringing in money from entities with interests before his Committee and she is not providing the transparency mandated by the IRS, there’s a serious problem.”
Moreover, “the potential for corruption in this situation is simply off the charts and can’t be understated. We hope Chairman Cummings works with his wife to end the stonewalling and provide the public with what’s legally mandated all charities provide.”
