In an explosive Election Commission filing, Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks’ Chief of Staff’s wife received nearly $200,000 from the lawmaker through a company the Chief owned.
Meeks, who was elected to Congress first in 1998, and first employed Robert Simmons in 2003 as a part-time aide before becoming his Chief of staff in 2008.
Patsy Simmons, Robert’s wife, worked for Meeks too and is listed as the treasurer of ‘Friends For Gregory Meeks’, the campaign committee for Meeks.
However, Robert’s wife’s position is supposed to be an unpaid job. However, mysterious payments from the Meeks campaign were made to Einna, Inc instead, a company registered by Patsy in 2008.
The Build America PAC, Meek’s political action plan committee, has also donated tens of thousands of dollars to Patsy Simmons’s company over the course of 9 years – not including what they already paid during the campaign.
Meeks campaign first took up Einna on the payroll in 2008, the same year Simmons became the Chief of Staff for Meeks NY office. The company received of $63,000 from Meeks’ campaign committee between 2008 and 2012.
During the 2014 election cycle, Einna also received of $33,800 from Meeks’ campaign, while his Build America PAC further enriched the firm, to the tune of $7,000.
Furthermore, Meek’s campaign made an additional payment to the company in the 2016 election cycle, worth $57,000 to Patsy’s company with a further $17,000 added through Meeks’ Build America PAC.
The company received these massive payments, under various vague headings like “administrative consulting services”.
In total, Patsy Simmons – through her company Einna – has received a sum of $196,100 from the Meeks Campaign committee and the PAC combined.
Earlier this year Meeks was under the pressure for reporting a non-existing address for both the campaign’s committees and PAC.
According to the reports, Meek’s two campaign committees Friend’s for Gregory Meeks and Meeks for Congress both were reported at the headquarters at an address that was later called a “phantom” address. Similar for Build America PAC the address listed was also a fake as its office space.