Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is facing new ethics allegations from a conservative organization that alleges he did not adequately disclose his wife’s financial interests.
The Center for Renewing America (CRA) filed a lawsuit pointing out that Raskin may have broken federal financial disclosure requirements by failing to disclose to the proper authorities the stock shares his wife, Sarah Bloom Raskin, got from a financial technology business in Colorado.
CRA President Russ Vought notes that members must lawfully declare their assets so that the public may see potential motivations behind a member’s actions.
In 2022, Rep. Raskin was accused of failing to declare a settlement of $1.5 million that his wife got from the sale of 195,936 shares of Reserve Trust. The accusations of misbehavior against Raskin were originally brought up in the lawsuit, which reintroduces them. Although the first transaction occurred on December 18, 2020, the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Raskin, did not submit the necessary papers to disclose the trade until August 20, 2021, according to a federal financial disclosure.
In 2022, the conservative watchdog organization, the American Accountability Foundation, filed an ethics complaint against Raskin about the findings. However, that complaint has since been expunged. The claims derailed Biden’s nomination of Sarah Bloom Raskin for the position of the Federal Reserve’s vice chairperson. CRA has filed a fresh complaint to re-establish the matter.
In his financial reports from 2017 to 2020, Raskin was accused by Vought, a former director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under former President Donald Trump, of breaching the Ethics in Government Act by failing to disclose his wife’s earned income.
The letter notes that Raskin’s reporting obligations were clearly violated and that this failure raises significant issues about possible subsequent infractions.
When Raskin failed to report this asset, the CRA asked the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) to look into whether he did anything to help his wife’s clients, such as the Reserve Trust.
The letter concludes that Representative Raskin has likely broken his disclosure duties and casts severe doubt on his honesty and capacity to serve his people well. Thus, it is respectfully requested by the Center for Renewing America that OCE initiate an inquiry into this situation.
