The Tea Party Express, which played a pivotal role in electing and nominating conservative candidates across the country in 2010, has forfeited $8,000 from its political war chest after questions from OpenSecrets Blog about the money's legitimacy -- although questions remain about how a dead woman's name was used to make the donations in the first place.
"It has come to the Committee's attention that online donations accepted and reported from Lee and Joan Holmes during 2009 and 2010 were actually only from Lee Holmes," the group wrote in a letter filed with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday.
"We have sent a refund check in the amount of $8,000 dated 1/13/2011 to Mr. Holmes to refund the amounts over the $5,000 limit per year," the letter continued. "We were unaware that Mr. Holmes' wife was deceased."
Between the autumn of 2009 and Election Day 2010, the Our Country Deserves Better PAC of the Tea Party Express reported four contributions totaling $7,500 from Joan Holmes, the late wife of retire Marine Corps colonel and media entrepreneur Lee Holmes of Guam. Joan Holmes died of cancer in February 2007, as OpenSecrets Blog reported Friday.
(Images of the FEC records are shown below. Click on the image to view a larger version.)
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Political contributions from the dead are permissible only under certain circumstances, such as establishing a trust before death with specific instructions about how the money is to be disbursed. Such was not the case with how Joan Holmes' name came to be among listed among the political donors to the Tea Party Express.
Lee Holmes told OpenSecrets Blog that he made the four contributions that appeared in the FEC filings under his wife's name with a credit card they jointly held.
"All four were made on a joint credit card account which my wife and I opened in 2004, for which my wife had asked to be the account holder," Holmes wrote to OpenSecrets Blog in an e-mail on Sunday. "After she died I continued to use my card on our account, filled out the forms for the Tea Party donations in my name, and I made all the payments."
As OpenSecrets Blog previously reported, Holmes himself was one of the first donors to the Tea Party Express' Our Country Deserves Better PAC. During the past two years, he personally contributed nearly the legal maximum of $5,000 -- with $4,900 appearing under his name in the group's FEC filings in 2010 and $5,500 appearing under his name during 2009.
In November 2009, the Our Country Deserves Better PAC refunded Holmes $335 for an excessive contribution. It remains unclear why the additional $165 was not fully refunded at the time. But now the group has refunded Holmes not just the $165 he excessively contributed in 2009 but an additional $335 -- for a total of $500, plus the $7,500 mistakenly reported under Joan Holmes' name.
If a political action committee accepts contributions that appear legal but later turn out to be prohibited, federal rules grant the PAC 30 days to refund the questionable contributions without penalty.
In cases of illegal or excessive contributions, if the contributor's identity is known, the committee must refund the funds to the source of the original contribution. In other cases, cutting a check to the U.S. Treasury for the amount in question is an approved alternate method of shedding the contributions.
Federal rules also prohibit individuals from making political contributions in the name of another person.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the maximum penalty for knowingly and willingly making illegal campaign contributions in the name of another is "five years in prison and a fine of not less than 300 percent of the amount involved in the violation and not more than the greater of $50,000 or 1,000 percent of the amount involved in the violation."
Lee Holmes maintains that he never made contributions using his wife's name.
"If I wanted to evade the gift limits, would I be so stupid as to use my own dead wife's name?" he told OpenSecrets Blog.
The Tea Party Express did not respond to multiple inquiries for further clarification. Last week, a Tea Party Express official told OpenSecrets Blog that the organization wasn't responsible for Joan Holmes' name appearing in the filing either.
Sal Russo, the chief strategist of the Tea Party Express, said the group's FEC filings contain information about donors' names, address, employers, occupation and so forth based on what donors themselves submit via online donation forms.
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