What’s the old saying? If Democrats didn’t have double-standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all, right?
Well, while some people might scoff at that idea, this story pretty much proves just how deep the left’s hypocrisy goes.
Take Rep. Elijah Cummings for instance. He’s been one of the loudest critics of President Trump, routinely calling for the President’s tax returns.
But now that he’s been accused of violating tax law, he doesn’t think he needs to produce any of his own.
Washington Examiner reported:
Rep. Elijah Cummings denied that corporate donations to his wife’s charity posed a conflict of interest with his House Oversight Committee chairmanship and denounced an IRS complaint filed against the organization as “a fabricated distraction” on Wednesday.
The National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group, filed an IRS complaint against Cummings’ wife Maya Rockeymoore’s nonprofit organization on Monday, the Washington Examiner first reported.
The complaint asked the IRS to investigate the overlap between Rockeymoore’s nonprofit Center for Global Policy Solutions and her for-profit consulting firm Global Policy Solutions LLC to determine whether the arrangement was used for “illegal private benefit.”
Rockeymoore’s nonprofit group and LLC have mutual clients, donors, and projects and were located at the same address and share a phone number. The National Legal and Policy Center’s IRS complaint claims that they “appear to operate almost as a single entity, allowing for an illegal private benefit for Maya Rockeymoore Cummings and her husband.”
Cummings, 68, a Maryland Democrat, is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Rockeymoore, 48, is the chairwoman of the Maryland Democratic Party and briefly ran in the state’s gubernatorial race last year. The couple married in 2008.
Rockeymoore’s nonprofit group received over $6.2 million in grants between 2013 and 2016 from special interest groups and corporations. Several of the nonprofit group’s financial backers — which included Google, J.P. Morgan, and Prudential — have business interests before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Cummings has served as Democratic chairman of the committee since January and previously served as ranking member.
The largest contributor to the nonprofit organization was the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which gave a total of $5.5 million to Rockeymoore’s consulting firm and $5.2 million to her nonprofit group. The foundation ceased supporting Rockeymoore’s groups in 2017. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation was established by Johnson & Johnson founder Robert Wood Johnson but is not officially affiliated with the pharmaceutical company. The foundation owns 13 million shares of Johnson & Johnson stock worth over $1.7 billion, making it one of the company’s largest shareholders.
In recent months, Cummings has been a vocal opponent of Johnson & Johnson, targeting the company as part of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation of drug price inflation. Rockeymoore told the Washington Post on Tuesday that she had no relationship with Johnson & Johnson and denied that there was any connection between Cummings’ investigation of the company and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ending its funding to her group.
Common Cause Maryland, a government watchdog group, told the Washington Post that the IRS complaint raised valid legal and ethical questions, and Rockeymoore and Cummings should work to address these issues.
The watchdog group’s Executive Director Joanne Antoine told the Post that Rockeymoore “should take steps to disclose possible conflicts with the Johnson Foundation and to disclose the financial records from the nonprofit in question.”