Far-left Democratic Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick might soon be expelled from Congress if House Republicans get their way.
The reason: A federal grand jury has indicted her and other defendants, including her brother, for purloining $5 million from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) and using it for contributions to her 2021 congressional campaign.
The indictment isn’t Cherfilus-McCormick’s first brush with federal law. In April, she was the target of a complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for myriad shenanigans with campaign funds and contributions.
The indictment and the FEC complaint are cited in the expulsion resolution from GOP Representative Greg Steube, also of Florida.
The DOJ Indictment
The Justice Department’s (DOJ) summary of the indictment explains that Cherfilus-McCormick, 46, and her brother, Edwin, 51, “worked through their family health-care company on a FEMA-funded COVID-19 vaccination staffing contract in 2021. In July 2021, the company received an overpayment of $5 million in FEMA funds.”
The defendants conspired to steal the money, then attempted to disguise the sources by routing the funds through “multiple accounts,” DOJ alleges:
Prosecutors allege that a substantial portion of the misappropriated funds was used as candidate contributions to Cherfilus-McCormick’s 2021 congressional campaign and for the personal benefit of the defendants.
The indictment also claims that Cherfilus-McCormick and another conspirator, Nadege Leblanc, 46, “arranged additional contributions using straw donors” from that contract. That went to “friends and relatives who then donated to the campaign as if using their own money.”
Also involved in the scheme, prosecutors allege, was Cherfilus-McCormick’s tax preparer, David K. Spencer, 41, who helped the congresswoman file a false return in 2021. The pair “falsely claimed political spending and other personal expenses as business deductions and inflated charitable contributions in order to reduce her tax obligations,” DOJ alleges.
Cherfilus-McCormick could go to prison for half a century, while big brother Cherfilus faces up to 35 years. Spencer and Leblanc face 33 years and 10 years, respectively.
Said U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi:
Using disaster relief funds for self-enrichment is a particularly selfish, cynical crime. No one is above the law, least of all powerful people who rob taxpayers for personal gain. We will follow the facts in this case and deliver justice.
“This is an unjust, baseless, sham indictment — and I am innocent. The timing alone is curious and clearly meant to distract from far more pressing national issues,” Cherfilus-McCormick claimed.
FEC Complaint
Cherfilus-McCormick is also the target of a 44-page, five-count FEC complaint, which explains:
On September 25, 2023, the Office of Congressional Ethics [OCE] … issued a report referring Cherfilus-McCormick to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ethics … following a comprehensive investigation.
OCE “unanimously voted to recommend that the House Ethics Committee further review the allegations against Cherfilus-McCormick, having found ‘substantial reason to believe’” the following:
(1) Cherfilus-McCormick made payments to a state political action committee that may have been in connection with her campaign for federal office and … failed to report these payments as contributions; (2) her primary campaign committee accepted and failed to report excessive contributions; and (3) her primary campaign committee failed to report transactions between its bank account and Cherfilus-McCormick’s businesses.
A damning note in the complaint alleges that the congresswoman’s income skyrocketed “by more than $6 million between 2020 and 2021,” with “more than $5.7 million” coming from Cherfilus-McCormick’s own consulting company for “fees and profit-sharing … for work for Trinity Health Care Services, Inc.”
The congresswoman’s campaign committee, SCM for Congress, reported that “Cherfilus-McCormick loaned her campaign committee over $6.2 million between 2021 and 2022,” says the complaint.
As well, the complaint alleges:
[SCM,] Cherfilus-McCormick’s authorized campaign committee, appears to have accepted and failed to report prohibited corporate contributions from Truth & Justice Inc. (“TJI”), a Florida not-for-profit corporation. SCM for Congress also failed to report transfers between it and businesses that Cherfilus-McCormick wholly or partly owned, which may have resulted in the conversion of campaign funds to personal use.
Expulsion Measure
Trinity Health Care Services, a footnote in the complaint says, is a family business. Cherfilus-McCormick’s parents own it, and she was its “chief executive officer until at least 2022.”
That company is what the DOJ report calls the “family health-care company” that received the overpayment in FEMA funds, Steube’s expulsion bill says:
[A]according to the indictment and public reporting, Trinity Health Care Services, a family-owned health care company led by Representative Cherfilus-McCormick, received a FEMA-funded contract to provide COVID-19 vaccination staffing services in 2021, and in July 2021 received an overpayment of approximately $5,000,000 in disaster funds from FEMA.
The bill notes that Cherfilus-McCormick and the co-defendants stole the loot, after which she used it to illegally finance her campaign with “large personal loans” and, as the indictment says, route straw-donor contributions “through other individuals to evade Federal campaign finance limits and reporting requirements.”
Steube had planned on filing merely a censure motion, but decided against it, he wrote on X, given the nature of the crimes of which Cherfilus-McCormick is accused.
“Defrauding the federal government and disaster victims of $5 million is an automatic disqualifier from serving in elected office,” he wrote:
Cherfilus-McCormick needs to be swiftly removed from the House before she can inflict any more harm on Congress, her district, and the State of Florida. …
If she refuses to resign and save Congress the embarrassment of having to expel her, I will bring this resolution to the floor for a vote.
