Sen. Raphael Warnock may have violated federal law by claiming a sketchy accounting loophole to take home a lucrative part-time pastor salary in 2022, a watchdog group charged in a complaint Tuesday.
The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust demanded the Senate Select Committee on Ethics immediately investigate whether Warnock lied on his 2022 financial disclosure in regard to his $155,000 salary for occasionally serving as a pastor at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
If Warnock fabricated his "Deferred compensation" arrangement to rake in money past the legal limit from his church in 2022, he could be fined up to $50,000 or sent to prison for up to a year, the complaint states.
Nor did the church reference any "Deferred compensation" arrangement for Warnock or any other employee in its audited financial statements for the years ending 2020 and 2021.
"Either Sen. Warnock and his church had a deferred compensation agreement that both have conspicuously failed to report the existence of for years, or he received outside income of over four times the legal limit," FACT executive director Kendra Arnold told the Free Beacon.
Warnock's 2021 arrangement was approved by the Senate Ethics Committee, the Democratic senator noted in his financial disclosure that year.
Warnock made no mention of any such approval for his "Deferred compensation" arrangement in his 2022 financial disclosure.
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