Kanye West could be in trouble for how he raised money during his ill-fated 2020 Presidential campaign.
According to The Daily Beast, the Federal Election Commission sent the rapper a notice that alleged several violations, including multiple donations from minors, multiple possible contributions from foreign nationals and several fake names and addresses.
Under federal law, it is illegal to knowingly solicit and accept campaign donations from anyone under the age of 18. It is also illegal to knowingly solicit or accept donations from foreign nationals, "which the West campaign appears to have done several times," the report says.
Jordan Libowitz, communications director for government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told The Daily Beast, "In five-plus years of doing this I've never come across something like this."
Kanye's campaign was mainly self-funded through $12.4 million in loans. Reports claim he collected $2.2 million from small-dollar donors, the vast majority of whom divvied out cash for Kanye Presidential merchandise. One teen, though, said he's still waiting to receive any merchandise, despite dropping $3,280.
"I don't know what's happening there," Ian Bloom, 16, said. "I ordered like 20 hoodies off his campaign website, along with a lot of other people that I know. They said it would be three weeks, and after that I emailed the support team, and the email just wasn't a thing."
The report states that students made up for 1,200 of the campaign's 3,161 reported donations, contributing a total $349,160, with $26,540 of that coming in 2021.
"Campaigns can continue raising as long as they have debt on the books, and they can continue to pay costs while working to pay that off. But if the debts have been paid and the candidate has lost, and hasn't converted the committee to the next campaign cycle, which Kanye has not done, then they can't raise money," Libowitz said, noting that Kanye's debts were paid off on Jan. 7. "There's no election for you to legally contribute to. But West continued to sell merch without raising money for debt. I've literally never seen something like this before."
Kanye, it seems, removed the online store and paused donations, but only after the FEC sent him a notice, which occurred several months after the election.
The alleged violations aren't criminal, but the FEC could levy fines.