Trump’s House Lackey, Devin Nunes, Is Being Probed Over Potential Violations of Campaign Finance Laws

It should be a known fact by now that anyone who willingly associates with Donald Trump has some crook in them. In America, you’re theoretically innocent until proven guilty (depending on the color of your skin and/or the contents of your bank account), but Trump’s brazen corruption is so extensive that in my mind, it’s impossible to position yourself near his inner circle and not at least begin to mimic America’s big orange fraud. So enter Devin Nunes, the man running interference for Trump on the Russia investigation in the House of Representatives.

Per the Federal Election Commission’s letter addressed to Nunes’ campaign treasurer (emphasis theirs):

This letter is prompted by the Commission’s preliminary review of the report referenced above. This notice requests information essential to full public disclosure of your federal election campaign finances. Failure to adequately respond by the response date noted above could result in an audit or enforcement action. Additional information is needed for the following 3 item(s):

The three items they demanded more information about from Nunes’ campaign all are contributions that either don’t add up on certain parts of his report, donations that exceed certain limits or those that come from corporation(s) and/or labor organization(s). The Daily Beast highlighted why just one of these donations may be problematic for the Californian Congressman:

$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 their website. 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 the Ambulance 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.

Devin Nunes has until April 24th to respond to the Federal Election Commission.

Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.