Reports confirm that US House Majority Whip Representative James Clyburn has spent marketing campaign funds on his family members and close friends according to campaign finance records.
Records indicate that Clyburn has peddled over $200,000 to his family members with a majority of those funds being directed towards his daughter, Jennifer Clyburn Reed whom is also the sits on the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission board, a position she was granted under the new Biden administration.
Critics noted during the 2020 national election campaign that Clyburn had went to some 2 dozen churches and other community events to help Biden recover his dwindling polling numbers amongst South Carolina Black voters.
Other finance records confirm that the Clyburn’s campaign has dished out $62,500 which they claim are payments for “rent” to a company named 49 Magnolia Blossom LLC since March 2020. Magnolia Blossom LLC happens to be Jennifer Clyburn’s property address, and can be assumed to be a property management company under the Clyburn family’s control.
Additionally, records show that Jennifer was given a whopping $45,000 between 2020 July, and December all under the guise of the payment being a campaign “management fee”.
Clyburn has also given his grandson, Walter A.C. Reed, thousands of dollars every month from the fund and similarly titled the contributions as a “campaign management fee”. Reed who already received a estimated $35,000 from Clyburn in 2021, has been continuing to receive payments from the slush fund. So far Clyburn’s grandson has received six payments from his grandfather’s campaign fund, estimating up to $21,000 in the first quarter of 2022 alone.
It doesn’t end there.
Records also showed that between April 2018 and October 2019, Angela Hannibal, Clyburn’s other daughter, collected more than $20,000 for catering and truck rentals. Cecil Hannibal, Angela’s husband, has also cashed out $70,000 for “community outreach” and travel remunerations.
Critics also note that Clyburn has held South Carolina’s sixth district seat mostly without any competition thanks to his presiding over the redrawing of the district lines since 1993. a seat he has held (and consistently redrawn) since it was first created as a ‘majority minority’ district back in 1993.
Clyburn is up for reelection 2022, but will face a contested Democratic primary for the first time in over a decade in June.
He will face off against Marcel Dixon, a grassroots candidate that’s built his platform off of getting reparations for Black Americans, improving the 6th district’s decaying infrastructure, and deposing Clyburn for alleged corruption.
In addition, Clyburn will have to contend against a newly financed Michael Addison, a local pubic adjuster who has a history of alleged defrauding himself and who has secured the support of much of the non-Black democratic voters in the district.
Addison has ties to the Act Blue democratic super PAC and has run for this seat twice before. Addison also runs Hayes Capital Management a large multi-national property management firm.
Clyburn’s staff have made no comments concerning the allegations.
–Barrington Williams, Sylvester Loving, B1Daily
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