Ethics Committee probing Rashida Tlaib for diverting campaign funds for personal use

  Because all of the focus in the media has been on the flimsy allegation that Donald Trump was trying to use Ukraine to take down a political opponent you might have missed the story about freshman Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib.

  In case you did miss it, she has been under investigation for alleged campaign finance violations and according to this story that investigation is expanding in light of newly discovered campaign communications which show he basically begging her campaign to give her money for personal use because she was “struggling financially right now.” Here is more:

The House Ethics Committee on Thursday released a trove of striking internal campaign communications sent in 2018 by Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, in which Tlaib urgently requested money from her congressional campaign to defray personal expenses — and, a government watchdog said, possibly violated federal law in the process.

The document dump was related to the committee’s ongoing ethics probe into Tlaib, which the panel said on Thursday would be “expanded” based on a referral from the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE).

And here is more still:

Texts and emails released by the Ethics Committee show Tlaib frantically contacting members of her staff for financial help.

In one April 2018 email offered as an exhibit by OCE, Tlaib wrote that she was “struggling financially right now” and was “sinking.” She continued: “So I was thinking the campaign could loan me money, but Ryan said that the committee could actually pay me. I was thinking a one time payment of $5k.”
In another email, on April 4, 2018, Tlaib wrote: “I am just not going to make it through the campaign without a stipend.”

In August of that year, Tlaib texted her future chief of staff Ryan Anderson at 6:38 a.m.: “Sorry for the early text but do you think the campaign can still pay me a stipend until the general. Trying to get out of debt.”

  Her lawyers are basically using James Comey’s Hillary Clinton defense, they are claiming she did not mean to break the law and there was no bad intent there, but I would like to see what would happen if you or I used the I-didn’t-mean-to defense.

 The irony of a person running for office who cannot make ends meet and needing to borrow money from her campaign now being a person who has a vote on taxing and spending is hard to miss…

malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium