Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) is facing major backlash after the Federal Election Commission (FEC) slapped her 2020 campaign committee, Citizens for Waters, with a hefty $68,000 fine for multiple violations of campaign finance law. The infractions include accepting excessive contributions, inaccurately reporting finances, and disbursing prohibited cash payments.

The FEC’s ruling, made public on Friday, outlines a disturbing pattern of mismanagement inside Waters’ campaign. Among the more serious charges: accepting $19,000 in excessive donations and making $7,000 in improper petty cash payouts—both clear violations of federal law. To avoid a court battle, Waters’ campaign agreed to the fine and pledged to send its treasurer to FEC training.

But this isn’t the first time Waters’ campaign operations have raised red flags.

Fox News, citing FEC documents, noted that the agreement between the commission and the campaign includes mandatory registration and attendance at official compliance training. The goal, apparently, is to help prevent similar “errors” going forward—though critics are questioning whether these “errors” are really just business as usual.

Waters’ campaign attorney Leilani Beaver claimed that the problems stemmed from “limited staff availability and resources” during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a letter to the FEC, she emphasized that the mistakes “were not willful or purposeful.” Yet, even the FEC’s bipartisan commission voted unanimously—4-0—to pursue the penalty, indicating the violations were serious enough to warrant federal attention despite the excuse of pandemic disruptions.

Adding fuel to the fire is a familiar name: Karen Waters, the congresswoman’s daughter. Breitbart previously reported that Waters’ campaign sent $8,000 to Karen’s company, Progressive Connections, for “slate mailer management fees” during the same 2020 cycle now under scrutiny. That’s on top of more than $1 million in total campaign payments her daughter has received since 2003.

OpenSecrets, a nonprofit tracking campaign spending, confirmed the scale of the violations. Their report emphasized that Citizens for Waters improperly handled thousands of dollars, with bookkeeping failures that extended well beyond clerical errors. It’s yet another case that raises ethics questions about lawmakers using campaign funds to enrich family members.

The scandal also lands at a politically sensitive time. The FEC only managed to vote on the matter days before Republican Commissioner Allen Dickerson stepped down, leaving the agency temporarily without enough members to conduct high-level business. Had the vote been delayed, the case could have been left unresolved indefinitely.

What remains clear is this: even with the campaign’s attempts to blame the pandemic for staff shortages, the pattern of financial mismanagement—combined with lucrative payments to a family member—paints a picture that’s hard to ignore. Waters, long known for her fiery rhetoric and attacks on political opponents, now finds herself facing serious credibility issues of her own.

As Democrats continue to push for campaign finance reform and ethics accountability across the aisle, critics are already calling out the hypocrisy. “If this were a Republican, we’d be seeing wall-to-wall coverage,” one conservative strategist noted.

With the FEC investigation concluded but public attention just beginning to heat up, the real question now is whether this scandal will stick to one of the most entrenched figures in the Democratic Party—or be swept under the rug like so many others. Either way, it’s a damaging headline for a veteran lawmaker who’s no stranger to controversy.