Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., center, her husband Paul, and Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, are seen within the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, November 16, 2022.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., is looking on the Federal Election Commission to require campaigns to send illegal campaign contributions to the U.S. Treasury as an alternative of refunding the cash to the unique donor.
Cortez Masto’s call for the brand new FEC rule comes after quite a few foreign donors and corporations have been caught making illegal campaign donations. Under current rules, the donors must pay a nice but can get their funds returned in full if a campaign chooses to return them.
“Requiring the disgorgement of illegally contributed funds to the U.S. Treasury—relatively than their return to donors—will create material consequences that can help deter illegal behavior,” Cortez Masto wrote to the FEC in a letter dated Tuesday and first reviewed by CNBC.
Cortez Masto points to an instance when Barry Zekelman, a Canada-based steel industry magnate, illegally helped funnel $1.75 million in his company’s money to a pro-Trump super PAC, America First Motion, in line with the commission. The billionaire was fined $975,000, a sum entities controlled by Zekelman pays, in line with The Latest York Times.
The contributions got here in 2018 from a Pennsylvania-based subsidiary of Zekelman’s company called Wheatland Tube. The FEC said the funds were an illegal donation made by a foreign national.
Still, as Cortez Masto points out, the nice could have limited impact on Zekelman because the illegal contribution was expected to be refunded in full.
A representative for America First Motion told CNBC that the $1.75 million donation “was refunded.” The PAC representative later showed CNBC an FEC filing that confirms Wheatland Tube received the $1.75 million refund last 12 months.
An attorney for Zekelman didn’t immediately reply to a request to comment.
Though Cortez Masto doesn’t mention cryptocurrency exchange FTX or its co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried in her letter, his contributions to campaigns could come under the identical scrutiny by the FEC if it enacted such a rule.
Federal authorities previously charged Bankman-Fried with using what they said was tens of tens of millions of dollars of misappropriated customer funds to make illegal political donations to each Democratic and Republican candidates.
