Former Rep. David Rivera (R-Florida) was fined $ 456,000 Tuesday by a federal court for his role in a campaign finance plan.
The U.S. District Court for the South Florida District ordered Rivera to pay the money to the Federal Electoral Commission (FEC), which had sued him in 2017 for secretly providing funds to a major rival of his eventual Democratic opponent in the 2012 election, to the details set out in the court order.
Rivera lost those elections to the former Democratic MP. Joe Garcia
Jose (Joe) Antonio Garcia Night Defense: Biden pays tribute to McCain at Phoenix Memorial Service | US considers sending captured ISIS fighters to Gitmo and Iraq | Senators are pushing Trump to end Yemen’s civil war. Biden pays tribute to McCain at an emotional memorial service for Mueller: Congress candidate asked Russian agents for information about opponent MORE (Fla.).
The commission accused Rivera of starting the scheme in April 2012 when he led an associate, Ana Sol Alliegro, to offer Justin Sternad, one of Garcia’s three main challenges, financial support for his campaign. Sternad accepted the offer and Alliegro spent the next few months transferring funds to Sternad’s campaign.
The Court rejected the initial complaint against Rivera in 2018 and the FEC modified the complaint in January 2019 accusing him of investing with knowledge of the campaign’s cash “in the name of another”.
The FEC he said in a press release who asked for a civil penalty of $ 456,000.
The court determined that Rivera allocated $ 75,927.31 in cash from the campaign to Sternad. In addition to the fine, the court also ordered Rivera to again violate the statute of the campaign.
In his Tuesday order, U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke described Rivera’s actions as “flagrant,” adding that there was a possibility that her conduct would continue to indicate that she continued to run for office after the plan.
“Perhaps by virtue of the Court banning Rivera from engaging in similar illegal conduct in the future,‘ this will do the trick ’of convincing Rivera (a former U.S. congressman) to stop violating the law,” he wrote. Cooke.
Rivera said The Miami Herald in a text that says the order “is based on lies, innuendos, rumors and fake news.”
Tuesday’s order was the first that Rivera had criminally confronted about the scheme, according to the Herald, which revealed it in 2012. The newspaper noted that Sternad and Alliegro were convicted of criminal charges.