Washington Post: Maya Rockeymoore Cummings calls IRS complaint against her politically motivated

The chair of the Maryland Democratic Party struck back Tuesday at a conservative watchdog organization that suggested her nonprofit agency violated its tax-exempt status, saying the allegation — and an article about it by a right-leaning publication — were attempts to silence her and her husband, House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.).

A complaint filed Monday with the Internal Revenue Service by the National Legal and Policy Center questions whether there is sufficient separation between a consulting practice and a nonprofit organization run by Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, the Maryland Democratic chair.

A report on the complaint published by the Washington Examiner pointed out that a foundation that funded those entities is tied to a corporation scrutinized by Cummings’s Oversight Committee and suggested that the connection poses a conflict of interest for Cummings. …

Joanne Antoine, executive director of Common Cause Maryland, a government watchdog group, said the Examiner article raises the possibility of a conflict of interest or self-dealing.

Rockeymoore Cummings “should take steps to disclose possible conflicts with the Johnson Foundation and to disclose the financial records from the nonprofit in question,” Antoine said.

Regardless of whether Rockeymoore Cummings is correct in saying that the Legal and Policy Center was “after her and her husband,” Antoine added, “it doesn’t mean that there aren’t valid pieces in there.”