Democrat Rep Caught Funneling Campaign Cash to Family Members
Congresswoman claims she paid relatives thousands of dollars to remember passwords
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A Democrat U.S. congresswoman has been caught funneling thousands of dollars in campaign cash to her family members, according to reports.
Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-CT) claims that she was paying her relatives tens of thousands to remember her "personal passwords."
According to a report by The Daily Caller, Hayes paid her two children more than $36,000 from her campaign fund since taking office in 2018.
Hayes used her campaign fund, called “Friends of Jahana Hayes,” to pump cash into her family members' bank accounts since entering Congress.
During Q4 2021, she paid her son $15,118.54.
During Q4 2021, “Friends of Jahana Hayes” paid Hayes’s daughter Asia Clermont $2,551.41 from her campaign fund in increments of $359.25 each.
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Since entering Congress, Hayes has paid her daughter $21,299.03 in campaign money.
These payments were marked under “payroll,” according to Federal Election Commission records.
After the initial report, Hayes reportedly told the Daily Caller her two children work on her reelection campaign.
More recently, Hayes doubled down on the “deeply important” campaign work her two children do, which includes managing “personal passwords and calendars.”
Hayes told local news:
"The positions that you’re asking about are handling of my personal passwords and calendars and things that are deeply important, so to have someone stay on after the election season and have the consistency and also the trust… again it’s not uncommon."
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Hayes’s Republican challenger, George Logan, said the payments indicate a “culture of entitlement."
"They may allow it but that doesn’t mean it’s right,” Logan said.
"We’re asking for two aspects to be looked at right?
"One is whether the work is real and whether the pay is legitimate.”
“This isn’t about scoring political points,” he added.
"This is about a culture of entitlement."
"Jahana Hayes would have been better off not admitting she’s paying her children tens of thousands of dollars to write down passwords,” one Republican strategist said.
