Dems ramp up subpoena threats after whistleblower claims White House overturned security clearance denials
White House pushes back after longtime security adviser blows the whistle on security clearances; Doug McKelway reports from Washington.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings is fighting back against allegations that his wife’s nonprofit organization violated its tax-exempt status and posed a potential conflict-of-interest with the work of his congressional panel.
Cummings, D-Md., blasted a complaint to the Internal Revenue Service against his wife, Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, who sits as chair of the Maryland Democratic Party and runs a nonprofit group and a for-profit consulting firm, as “baseless,” and partisan.
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“These baseless claims come from a group funded by right-wing mega-donors known for their political hit jobs,” Cummings said in a statement to Fox News. “I am confident that they will be exposed for what they really are – a fabricated distraction from the important work being done on behalf of Americans, such as lowering the skyrocketing prices of prescription drugs.”
The complaint, filed to the IRS by conservative watchdog group the National Legal Policy Center, and first reported by Washington Examiner, alleged that Rockeymoore Cummings’ nonprofit organization, Center for Global Policy Solutions, overlapped with her for-profit firm, Global Policy Solutions, LLC, and reportedly may have been used to derive “illegal private benefit.”
According to the Examiner’s report, Global Policy Solutions received over $6.2 million in grants between 2013 and 2016. The report claims that several of the nonprofit’s financial backers included Google, J.P. Morgan and Prudential—all of which had business interests before the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Cummings, and could pose a conflict of interest.
“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,” director of the National Legal and Policy Center’s Government Integrity Project, Tom Anderson, told the Examiner. “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.”
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Rockeymoore Cummings, in a statement to The Washington Post last week, blasted the report and the complaint as a “hit piece.”
“It appears a conservative front group and a news outlet . . . are pushing a hit piece filled with faulty research, lies and innuendo in an attempt to tarnish my personal reputation, professional work and public service as well as that of my spouse,” Rockeymoore Cummings said in a statement to The Post, calling the effort a “distasteful attempt to intimidate my family into silence at such a pivotal moment in our nation’s history.”
Meanwhile, Cummings’ panel is currently leading several Trump-focused investigations—spanning from interest in President Trump’s tax returns to information on the White House’s controversial security clearance process.
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