Two political committees belonging to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) have spent the past two days filing amended FEC reports to correct errors and omissions by their treasurer: his mom.
The fundraising committees—Nunes Victory Fund, and his leadership PAC, NEW PAC—have also removed Nunes’ mother’s email address and replaced them with an unspecified “Treasurer 1” and “Treasurer 2.”
Those emails serve as contact points for the Federal Election Commission, which sends notices called “Requests for Additional Information” (RFAIs) when compliance officials flag errors or inconsistencies. The FEC sent an additional five notices on Thursday and Friday to the conservative’s official campaign committee, where Toni Nunes has run the books since her son’s first congressional bid in 2002.
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All but one of the campaign’s 2020 FEC reports filed by Nunes’ mom contain material errors, according to the RFAIs. Flaws include duplicate contributions from GOP mega-donors such as Home Depot CEO Bernie Marcus ($50.5 million career giving), billionaire energy mogul Kelcy Warren ($23.8 million), and investor Rex Sinquefield ($12.2 million).
The FEC also said NEW PAC failed to disclose a donation from health insurance provider Humana. An amended report filed Thursday shows the donation amount was $5,000, noting that the item was returned by bank on Jan. 22.
In total, the FEC sent the Nunes Victory Fund and his campaign six RFAIs each for the 2020 election cycle. Some corrected reports prompted second notices. But it’s not the first time Toni Nunes has come under federal scrutiny. In the 2018 cycle, the FEC sent the campaign eight RFAIs.
Beyond the duplicate transactions, the FEC’s recent letters also pointed out mathematical inconsistencies, which the regulator also noted in other elections. Other discrepancies include an apparent failure to denote contributions in appropriate fields and an unclarified description.
In 2019, the notoriously litigious Nunes cited his mom in a $77.5 million civil suit filed in an Iowa district court against Esquire and journalist Ryan Lizza, claiming that Lizza defamed him in an article suggesting his family tried to cover up the use of undocumented immigrant labor at their family dairy farm in Iowa. The complaint cites Lizza’s claim that Nunes’ mom had followed the journalist in a car during his investigative work.
The judge tossed the lawsuit a year later, ruling that the article’s content doesn’t “plausibly support a defamation claim.”
Nunes also cited his mom in a separate 2019 defamation suit filed in Henrico County, Virginia. That suit seeks $250 million in damages from several parties, including an anonymous parody Twitter account, @DevinNunesMom. The complaint describes “Devin Nunes’ Mom” as “a person who, with Twitter’s consent, hijacked Nunes’ name, falsely impersonated Nunes’ mother, and created and maintained an account on Twitter (@DevinNunesMom) for the sole purpose of attacking, defaming, disparaging and demeaning Nunes.”
“In her endless barrage of tweets, Devin Nunes’ Mom maliciously attacked every aspect of Nunes’ character, honesty, integrity, ethics and fitness to perform his duties as a United States Congressman,” the suit claims. Tweets cited in the lawsuit accuse Nunes of sedition, calling him a “treasonous shitbag” and a “treasonous Putin shill,” and claim that he was an agent for “the Kremlin.”
The suit is active, with a hearing slated for July that will take up the question of whether the claims are valid.
