Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is taking heat for some possible campaign-finance violations.
The Federal Election Commission on Wednesday sent a letter to Nunes’ campaign committee, raising red flags about some particular contributions received in 2017. The letter, sent to Nunes’ campaign treasurer and mother Toni Dian Nunes, requested “information essential to full public disclosure” about three potentially illegal contributions.
A total of $3,000 was contributed to Nunes’ campaign fund by Harris Lee Cohen, whose FEC contribution information lists him as the manager of “SIFI,” or Setton International Foods, Inc. in Terra Bella, CA. According to their website, Cohen is the general manager of Setton Pistachio. Cohen contributed $1,500 in July 2017, and again in November.
FEC reports also show that Joshua Setton, listed as the President/CEO of Setton Farms in Terra Bella, contributed a total of $16,700 towards Nunes’ campaign committee and victory fund.
$3,000 was also contributed to Nunes from Jeffrey J. Kimbell, president of a Washington lobbying firm specializing in “legislative, regulatory and policy solutions to clients in the life sciences community,” according to theirwebsite. Kimbell’s FEC contribution information lists him as a self-employed “health care consultant” in his June contribution of $1,000 and his two December contributions of $1,700 and $300.
According to ProPublica, Kimbell’s firm lobbied on behalf of clients Acadian Ambulance and Superior Air-Ground Ambulance Services on bills like theAmbulance Medicare Budget and Operations Act of 2017, introduced in July, and the Comprehensive Operations, Sustainability, and Transport Act of 2017, introduced in September. Both bills were sponsored by Nunes.
Both Kimbell’s and Cohen’s contributions violate FEC limits, prohibiting “an individual…[from making] contribution(s) to a candidate for federal office in excess of $2,700 per election.”
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An additional $10,000 was also contributed last November by Stone Land Company, a “family farming operation” operating near Nunes’ California district. The company sent an undated letter to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Bay Delta office pushing for a “reliable water supply” in the state and that it repair “California’s broken water system.”
Stone Land Company’s money to the Nunes campaign violates the FEC rule that forbids contributions “from corporations and labor organizations unless made from separate segregated funds established by the corporations and labor organizations.”
Nunes has until April 24 to respond to the FEC.
TOUGH LIF
Gavin McInnes Whines His Fellow Rich Neighbors Don’t Like Him
The self-styled conservative punk lives in a liberal New York enclave where he says he’s the victim of everyone from soccer moms to George Soros.
Kelly Weill
Online, Gavin McInnes is the gung-ho, ex-punk leader of a hate group who rails against liberal decadence. At home in his wealthy New York suburb, he’s upset that liberals won’t accept him.
“I blame [George] Soros for all of this,” McInnes said during a September broadcast of Infowars, on which he bemoaned what he claimed was his supposedly degraded social status. “Soros is terrorizing me and trying to shut down my fraternal club, the Proud Boys. And he’s paying people to mess with my life, and spread these lies about me, spread fake news.”
McInnes, 48, built his profile as a New York media provocateur. As co-founder of the media company Vice, he was an architect of the ironic hipster culture of the early 2000s, a scene that sometimes gave him cover for racist remarks that he defended as jokes before leaving Vice in 2008. Years later, in 2016, he began a new chapter in life: founding the Proud Boys—a violent, ultranationalist men’s club—and selling his $2.5 million Brooklyn penthouse to buy a home in Larchmont, a tony Westchester County town 20 miles north of the city.
After months of high-profile street fights involving the Proud Boys, neighbors in McInnes’ upscale town are starting to take notice of who exactly moved next door.
A local man at a country club mocked McInnes for being involved with Infowars and tried to sabotage his application to join, he claimed in the September broadcast. One of his daughter’s tutors allegedly stopped working for the family, citing McInnes’ politics. In a June broadcast, he claimed to have gotten into an altercation with a neighbor and kicked the man’s dog.
“I see it in my neighborhood,” McInnes said. “I see whispers all the time. I’m walking down the street and a housewife goes,” he made an outraged face “like she’s finally seen Hannibal Lecter walk by. And what is the horror? The horror is that I like Trump, and that if I like Trump I might be conservative.”
Larchmont residents’ real problem, locals say, is with McInnes’ role in the Proud Boys, which has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. And the Proud Boys’ involvement in a Manhattan brawl brought McInnes to the neighborhood’s attention.