The Federal Election Commission has forced Darline Graham to refund Senate campaign donations from powerful backers that surpassed legal limits.
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According to a Wednesday report by NOTUS, the GOP candidate for Senate in South Carolina and sister of late Sen. Lindsey Graham violated campaign finance rules. Graham must refund or redesignate roughly 10 percent of her cash on hand, currently $251,000, according to NOTUS.
Individual donors may give a federal-level political candidate up to $3,500 per election, including primaries, runoffs, and general elections, under FEC rules.
In a to Graham’s campaign, the FEC flagged “excessive” donations from powerful business and political figures like Charles Schwab, David Wilkins, the former U.S. ambassador to Canada, and Ziad Ojakli, the head of public policy at TikTok.
Some of the largest donations were more than $7,000. Schwab donated $7,000 even to Graham’s campaign, while most of the other flagged donations were just over the $3,500 limit. All of the donations flagged by the FEC were given between July 29 and August 5, only a few weeks after Sen. Lindsey Graham’s death.
The FEC also flagged contributions from the leaders of Blackstone, AmTrust, Micco Corporation, Westrock Capital Partners, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) PAC Denali Leadership, whose $10,000 donation went $5,000 over the legal limit for contributions from committees, according to the FEC.
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Graham received more than $24,000 worth of contributions over the legal limit in the course of a single week early in her campaign.
If Graham fails to respond and refund her donations by September 21, her campaign will face a possible audit or “enforcement action,” according to the FEC.
Graham is headed for a runoff against Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) to decide who will face Democratic candidate Annie Andrews, who has raised $10 million, per CNN.
James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, was also forced to give back more than $1 million after violating FEC rules.
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