Democrat Tom Malinowski Finds Loophole to Accept Corporate PAC Money

Vulnerable Democrat Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), who will have a tough reelection battle, found a way around his “no-corporate PAC pledge.” Throughout the last 18 months, he has accepted campaign contributions from business and professional interest groups.

Malinowski, like many other congressional members, created an arbitrary pledge not to take any corporate PAC money before being caught sidestepping his own words to build up a war chest. Before the last election, in September 2020, Malinowski said that he would not “take corporate PAC money, so they don’t own” him.

In September 2020, he argued that accepting money from other members that take corporate cash is okay because the money is not coming directly from the corporation. He affirmed his belief that a “no-corporate PAC pledge” is so he is “able to say that I don’t owe them a thing, so I can make decisions solely based on what I think is right for my constituents.”

However, while he’s taken at least $200,000 from other members and their leadership PACs, he’s also taken $43,000 from business interest groups, corporate lobbying giants, and individual corporate lobbyists — all since taking his pledge in September 2020, according to the Washington Free Beacon, which first reported on this.

Since October 2020, Malinowski has accepted $8,250 from lobbying group PACs Winning Strategies and Nelson Mullins. The two firms have represented big corporations such as BP, Google, and Comcast. The Free Beacon wrote that since September 2020, he has also taken over $22,000 from business and professional interest groups like the American Council of Engineering Companies and the National Confectioners Association — which spent $479,000 on lobbying last year alone.

As Breitbart News reported, Malinowski, who has also consistently opposed measures to make America energy independent again, took thousands in donations from a lobbyist for the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Since September 2020, Malinowski has accepted $8,600 from former Democratic state lawmaker Vincent Roberti.

Roberti runs a firm that has earned millions of dollars lobbying for Nord Stream 2, the pipeline that would transport national gas from Russia to Germany. In fact, Roberti’s Malinowski campaign contribution came just months before the Biden administration waived sanctions on the controversial project.

Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.