Today, the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) filed an amendment to its May 20 Complaint to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regarding Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, and the Center for Global Policy Solutions (CGPS), a nonprofit 501(c)(3) group that she heads. Cummings is the wife of Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
The amendment is prompted by a news story on June 5, 2019 in the Daily Caller by Andrew Kerr titled “Elijah Cummings’s Wife Used Her Charity to Pay For-Profit Company, Documents Show.”
Maya Rockeymoore Cummings is also the only principal in Global Policy Solutions, LLC (GPS, LLC), a for-profit limited liability corporation that NLPC alleged in its May 20 Complaint to be “impermissibly entwined” with the nonprofit CGPS.
According to CGPS financial statements for 2014 and 2015 cited in the Daily Caller article, GPS, LLC received a fee of 5% of CGPS expenses. From the amendment:
Maya Rockeymoore Cummings was paid a substantial full-time salary to head the nonprofit CGPS. At the same time, the for-profit GPS, LLC, of which she is the sole principal, received “a fee of 5 percent of the Center’s expenses for managing its programs and operations. “ Thus, Maya Rockeymoore Cummings appears to have been paid twice for the same services.
The amendment also asked the IRS to examine the “Professional Fees” line item on the financial statements, which in 2015 exceeded the amount on the “Salaries” line. From the amendment:
Nowhere on the schedule or in the (auditors) report, however, is there any information on what these fees were for, or who received them.
Was Maya Rockeymoore Cummings also the recipient of Professional Fees? Was Maya Rockeymoore Cummings paid three (or more) times for the same work? The IRS has an obligation to find out.
The amendment additionally asks the IRS to examine whether Maya Rockeymoore Cummings lied on the CGPS 2015 tax return, when she answered “no” to a question about self-dealing, as well as her continued refusal to allow public and media access to the latest CGPS tax return, as required by law.
IRS Complaint (Amendment) vs. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings and Center for Global Policy Solutions by Peter Flaherty on Scribd