Rep. Dan Crenshaw fined $42K by FEC for campaign finance violations

By 
 December 5, 2022

The Federal Election Commission levied a sizable fine against Rep. Dan Crenshaw's (R-TX) campaign committee for failing to properly report hundreds of thousands of dollars in unlawful campaign contributions.

The Federal Election Commission's Reports Analysis Division referred the Texas Republican to the Office of General Counsel.

According to a report by Breitbart News, the lawmaker had not returned illegal contributions totaling $223,460.26 from the 2020 election cycle. According to court records, the Texas Republican was fined $42,000 for not returning those funds.

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:

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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.

The documents also indicated the information behind the commission's report “reason to believe” Crenshaw’s campaign committee committed a violation.

The committee, along with the treasurer, Paul Kilgore, allegedly violated federal law by “knowingly accepting excessive and prohibited corporate contributions” totaling over $223,460.26 during the 2020 election. The fine was a part of a conciliation agreement Crenshaw’s campaign had with the FEC last month.

“Unfortunately this often happens when campaigns receive thousands of online donations and checks in a short period,” a spokesman for Crenshaw’s campaign told Breitbart News.

“We can only process them so quickly. Sometimes donors send more than they are supposed to. We refund them the money, but that takes time. We weren’t fast enough for the FEC deadlines.”

All of this is happening as Crenshaw allegedly competes for the chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee. He was one of two House Republicans who applied last month for the job of accompanying Republican.

Crenshaw was also accused of not disclosing when he bought stocks last year. According to The Daily Beast's report, "he made half a dozen buys as the largest economic relief package in history was written and debated."

"Five of those purchases came in the three days between March 25 and 27, as the Senate and House voted on the CARES Act and former President Trump signed it into law," the publication went on.

"Crenshaw, who supported the bill, did not initially disclose the transactions, in violation of the STOCK Act, a law that requires members of Congress to tell the public when they engage in securities trades. Months later he amended his records to reflect the purchases."

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