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The violations weren’t minor bookkeeping mistakes, either. The FEC determined that Citizens for Waters accepted $19,000 in excessive donations from seven individuals between 2019 and 2020—far above the legal cap of $2,800 per individual per election. And while the campaign did eventually refund the illegal cash, it did so in an “untimely” manner, violating federal timelines.
But that’s not all. The Waters campaign also made four illegal cash payments, each exceeding the $100 limit, totaling around $7,000. That’s a clear breach of election law, which bars large cash transactions due to transparency and fraud concerns.
In response, the campaign claimed it had sought legal advice and implemented internal reforms to prevent future violations. “The committee contends that it retained legal counsel to provide advice and guidance to the treasurer and implemented procedures to ensure the disbursements comply with the requirements of the Act,” the FEC document states.
Waters’ attorney, Leilani Beaver, tried to downplay the situation in a letter to the FEC last year. She claimed the issues were simply “errors” and not “willful or purposeful.”
But this isn’t the first time Waters has been caught playing fast and loose with campaign funds.
In 2023, Fox News Digital reported that her campaign had paid her daughter, Karen Waters, a whopping $192,300 between January 2021 and December 2022 for a controversial “slate mailer” operation. That shady tactic involves promoting candidates via sample ballots—something rarely used outside of California and widely criticized as a backdoor scheme to funnel cash to political allies.
Critics pointed out that Waters’ daughter earned thousands for this work—while the campaign’s reports show she was paid as little as a single dollar for some of it.
In another earlier scandal, the FEC had voted 5-1 to dismiss a different complaint alleging Waters had accepted improper campaign donations back in 2018.
And when she’s not wrapped up in ethics probes, Waters is known for her off-the-wall tirades. In one infamous moment, she demanded an investigation into then-First Lady Melania Trump’s immigration status during an anti-DOGE protest in Los Angeles.
“When he [Trump] talks about birthright, and he’s going to undo the fact that the Constitution allows those who are born here, even if the parents are undocumented, they have a right to stay in America. If he wants to start looking so closely to find those who were born here and their parents were undocumented, maybe he ought to first look at Melania,” Waters said in video clips that went viral online.
“We don’t know whether or not her parents were documented. And maybe we better just take a look,” she added from the rally stage.
Not long after, Waters also went ballistic on Elon Musk during a protest in Washington, D.C., accusing the Tesla CEO of stepping far outside his role.
“We have got to tell Elon Musk that nobody elected your ass. Nobody told you you could get all of our private information. Nobody told you you could be in charge of the payments of this country,” she shouted at the event.
Despite her decades-long tenure in Congress—since 1991—Waters seems to be racking up more controversy than legislation. And this latest FEC fine adds yet another chapter to a career marred by questionable ethics, family payouts, and bombastic public outbursts.
OpenSecrets was the first to uncover the new developments in this FEC investigation.
Whether voters will hold Waters accountable for this pattern of misconduct remains to be seen. But with a $68,000 fine and a growing list of ethics concerns, it’s clear Maxine Waters is facing more scrutiny than ever before.
