What does a Lyft car with congressional plates and Illegal Private Benefit have in common?
Via a photo submitted to the blog Popville, word got out last weekend that a Lyft car with congressional plates, which bestow special parking privileges for members and staffers, was spotted in the District.
No, it's not Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings driving for Lyft, it's his daughter, Adia, who borrowed her father's car, a black Honda sporting official congressional license plates.
Cummings cleared things up in a statement, “In an effort to earn some extra money to pay her expenses at school, she signed up for a part-time position with one of the ride-sharing companies. They, in turn, gave her a sticker to apply to the windshield of the car.”
Rep. Elijah Cummings daughter gained some privileges from his position and it now appears that wife may have gained 'illegal private benefit' from his committee activities.
A charity run by the wife of Rep. Elijah Cummings received millions from special interest groups and corporations that had business before her husband’s committee and could have been used illegally, according to an IRS complaint filed by an ethics watchdog group.
Maya Rockeymoore Cummings is the chair of the Maryland Democratic Party and ran for governor last year. Rockeymoore also runs the nonprofit Center for Global Policy Solutions and the for-profit consultancy Global Policy Solutions LLC. The complaint filed by the National Legal and Policy Center claims the activities of the two overlapped.
The nonprofit, the Examiner reports, received more than $6.2 million in grants from backers including Google and Prutential, who have business interests before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which Cummings chairs. The largest benefactor was the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is tied to Johnson & Johnson, which is also regulated by the committee. Cummings has been outspoken on the issue of drug price inflation in recent years, attempting to work with President Donald Trump on the matter.
Tom Anderson, director of the National Legal and Policy Center’s Government Integrity Project, which has been investigating the nonprofit arrangement and provided research to the Washington Examiner, said “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,” said Anderson. “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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