The House Ethics Committee has determined socialist radical Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., violated campaign finance rules by paying herself a campaign salary after she was no longer a candidate for elected office.
Tlaib was nailed after a year-long investigation, more than 600 pages of documents and five witness interviews resulted in evidence that the Detroit representative took campaign money for personal use after she won her 2018 congressional election.
The finding is a rare instance of legislative self-oversight, but the punishment amounts to less than the proverbial slap on the wrist.
The Democrat-controlled committee ordered Tlaib to pay $10,800 in restitution to her own campaign account and stopped short of further penalties citing a lack of “ill intent.”
“The committee did not find that she sought to unjustly enrich herself by receiving the campaign funds at issue,” the House Ethics Committee said in an official statement on Friday.
The committee, chaired by liberal Democrat Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida, reasoned that harsher penalties should not apply because Tlaib paid herself a salary that was below the legal limit and it allowed her to forgo outside employment “so that she could fully participate in campaign activities.”
“However, because she received some of those funds, totaling $10,800, for time periods in which she was no longer a congressional candidate, those funds were inconsistent with [the campaign law’s] personal use restrictions,” the committee concluded.
Tlaib’s socialist “Squad” cohorts Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, and Ilhan Omar, D-Minnesota, have also faced ethics complaints.
Ocasio-Cortez is accused of violating at least two provisions of the House Code of Official Conduct and possibly U.S. criminal law for making false statements about listing her live-in boyfriend as a staff member and getting him an official House email address.
Omar has faced ethics complaints about a potential immigration fraud scheme that involved marrying her own brother.
Omar has since remarried the owner of a campaign vendor that her congressional campaign has paid more than $1 million.
Tlaib represents an overwhelmingly Democrat district and won a primary election this week against the president of the Detroit City Council.
“If I was considered the most vulnerable member of the Squad, I think it’s safe to say the Squad is here to stay, and it’s only getting bigger,” she said in her victory speech.
