End Citizens United (ECU) filed a complaint yesterday with the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) against Representative Ken Calvert in California’s 41st Congressional District. The complaint centers on Rep. Calvert’s failure to disclose several properties on his personal financial disclosures (PFD) and conflicts of interest involving earmarked funds to boost the value of those properties.
“Representative Calvert is back to his old ways, shamelessly abusing his position of power for personal financial gain,” said End Citizens United President Tiffany Muller. “Through his gross misuse of earmarked funds, he’s blurring the line between his duties as an elected official and his personal business dealings. The fact that he failed to disclose several properties on his financial disclosure forms––a process he is fully aware of after over 30 years in office––coupled with the use of federal funds to boost his property value, leaves no room for misunderstanding about what he’s doing.”
Muller added, “This brazen level of self-enrichment is precisely why Congress banned earmarks in the first place. Instead of hiding behind carefully curated press releases, he owes families in the district a clear explanation of why he hid these properties from them and how much he stands to benefit from the earmarked funds. Until then, we’re calling on the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate Representative Calvert and hold him accountable for these egregious violations.”
Rep. Calvert’s three-decade tenure in office has been marked by corruption and self-dealing, prompting multiple FBI investigations. As a real estate investor, he previously directed federal taxpayer funding towards projects that benefited his personal real estate investments, such as funding a road near his lands and a transportation hub near seven parcels he owned. One of these transactions saw him sell land at an 80% profit, helping boost his net worth by up to $20 million while in office.
The Complaint:
- On his 2021 PFD, Rep. Calvert reported owning and receiving rental income from properties located at 1210 and 1212 East 6th Street in Corona, California. However, while he checked the box on Schedule A of his 2021 PFD indicating that there had been a transaction involving this asset in 2021, Rep. Calvert did not report any transactions or purchases related to those properties on Schedule B. Since these properties were not listed at all on previous years’ reports, it is entirely unclear when or how Rep. Calvert came into possession of the 1210 and 1212 East 6th Street properties.
- Similarly, in 2020, Rep. Calvert reported owning and receiving rental income from an Annex Dollar 9, 1075 E. 3rd Street in Corona, California for the first time. However, on his 2019 and 2020 PFDs, he did not report any transactions or purchases related to this property. Again, the information provided on his PFDs does not shed light on when or how Rep. Calvert came into possession of this property.
- And finally, in 2016, Rep. Calvert reported owning a property located at 6141 St. Andrews Plaza in Palm Springs, California for the first time. However, his 2015 and 2016 PFDs do not contain a record of him purchasing this property. Then, in 2021, Rep. Calvert did not report owning the property, which creates the assumption that he sold 6141 St. Andrews Plaza. But just as he failed to disclose how he acquired the property, his PFDs shed no light on how he disposed of the property.
- Additionally, a recent report from the L.A. Times highlighted Rep. Calvert’s involvement in securing funding for projects near his properties. Since the legislative process known as Community Project Funding (commonly referred to as “earmarking”) was restarted in 2021, Rep. Calvert has secured more than $100 million for projects in his Riverside County district.
- Some of these projects, such as the $2 million to widen a bridge along Magnolia Avenue and $9 million for improvements along Interstate 15, fall within several miles of rental properties that Rep. Calvert owns – including less than three miles from his 1210 and 1212 East 6th Street properties, which he failed to disclose the purchase of on his financial disclosures. The lack of information on the properties hinders the ability to determine the potential impact of nearby earmarks on the properties’ value appreciation.
- The reporting additionally highlights that Calvert supported funding “$5 million through federal appropriations to help pay for the environmental study for a rail line between downtown L.A. and Palm Springs.” The report goes on to note, “[t]he routes and stops haven’t been decided yet, but one of the two Metrolink lines running between L.A. and Riverside stops in downtown Corona a few blocks from several of Calvert’s properties.”
- This series of omissions makes clear that although Rep. Calvert may have filed his PFDs, the documents that he submitted lacked pertinent information and fell short of the standards imposed by law. Furthermore, his failure to disclose properties – and their purchase values before Calvert directed earmarked funds in their vicinity – raises significant concerns about potential conflicts of interest with earmarks for projects near those properties. These omissions not only violate the spirit of transparency required by law but also erode public trust by obscuring the potential for personal gain from his legislative actions.
- For years, Rep. Calvert has failed to report the purchases and sales of multiple rental properties. Rep. Calvert has owned and received rental income from at least four properties over eight years. Yet both the public and the Clerk of the House lack even basic information regarding how he came to possess these properties.
- Additionally, Rep. Calvert has sold at least one of these properties at an undisclosed time, for an undisclosed price, to an unknown purchaser. These omissions represent a significant gap in the public’s knowledge of Rep. Calvert’s financial profile and raise questions about why Rep. Calvert did not disclose these transactions despite a clear legal standard and set of instructions requiring him to do so.
Click here to read the full complaint.
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