As RedState reported, Democrat Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (FL-20) has been charged by the Department of Justice for allegedly stealing millions of dollars in FEMA money during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the indictment, the Democrat is accused of “laundering the proceeds, and then using the money to support her 2021 Congressional campaign.”
The scheme involved a family health-care company where both Cherfilus-McCormick and her brother, who has also been charged, are said to have routed $5 million in FEMA funds through multiple accounts to hide the money’s origin. They then allegedly funneled some of it to family members and friends, who then made “donations” to the Cherfilus-McCormick’s congressional campaign.
SEE: DOJ Indicts Democrat Congresswoman on Charges of Stealing $5 Million in Alleged FEMA Funds
“Cherfilus-McCormick, 46, and her brother Edwin Cherfilus, 51, both of Miramar, worked through their family health-care company on a FEMA-funded COVID-19 vaccination staffing contract in 2021,” the DOJ press release shared. “In July 2021, the company received an overpayment of $5 million in FEMA funds.”
“The indictment alleges that the defendants conspired to steal that $5 million and routed it through multiple accounts to disguise its source,” it added. “Prosecutors allege that a substantial portion of the misappropriated funds was used as candidate contributions to Cherfilus-McCormick’s 2021 congressional campaign and for the personal benefit of the defendants.”
“The indictment further alleges that Cherfilus-McCormick and Nadege Leblanc, 46, of Miramar, arranged additional contributions using straw donors, funneling other monies from the FEMA-funded Covid-19 contract to friends and relatives who then donated to the campaign as if using their own money,” the statement continued.
How would Cherfilus-McCormick respond? We didn’t have to wait long to find out. On Wednesday, she was asked to react to the indictment, and her answer was astonishing, and not in a good way.
Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (@CongresswomanSC) on her recent indictment: “It was an unjust indictment, and it seems like these intimidation tactics have been pervasive…” pic.twitter.com/Egz9V9Znbm
— CSPAN (@cspan) November 20, 2025
CHERFILUS-MCCORMICK: Well, it’s an unjust indictment, and it seems like these intimidation tactics have been pervasive. We spent all week seeing different members getting censured, all in hopes of intimidating and kind of distracting from the Epstein files, and I look forward to my day in court so I can prove myself and actually state the truth.
But if this is what Congress is becoming, where they’re always trying to intimidate you, scare tactics, especially attacking minorities, black and brown people, then we’re going to have to keep fighting for the district, and everybody has been giving me so much support, and we are going to keep fighting until the district gets what it needs, which is fair prices, housing, and fair representation in Congress. Thank you so much.
There’s a lot to unpack there. For starters, if this were an “intimidation tactic,” it wouldn’t be used against one of the most unknown members of the House. Cherfilus-McCormick is too irrelevant to be the target of a politicized indictment, and that’s one of the reasons she should take the seriously. I had no idea she even existed until this news broke, and I’d guess the same is true of almost everyone in the Trump administration as well.
It should also be noted that this investigation began under the Biden administration, and there’s simply no evidence this was done as a way of “distracting from the Epstein files.” That’s a ludicrous contention, given that an indictment like this takes years to formulate. This was not cooked up overnight as part of some short-term political gambit, and Cherfilus-McCormick knows that. She also knows that this has absolutely nothing to do with race, though it is laughably typical that she’d use the “black and brown” trope to deflect from her alleged criminal actions.
That’s quite literally all Democrats have at this point. Playing the race card has become an instinctual reflex in situations like this. When Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) was filmed shoving an ICE agent in an attempt to break into an immigration facility, she and other Democrats also played the race card. In the absence of any real excuse for bad behavior, they just parrot “black and brown” like it’s some kind of magic shield. I guess that’s because it has been at times in the past. Somehow, I doubt that works here, though. Cherfilus-McCormick better figure out quickly that playing the MSNBC crowd isn’t going to save her here.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media isn’t interested in the facts; they’re only interested in attacking the president. Help us continue to get to the bottom of stories like the Jeffrey Epstein files by supporting our truth-seeking journalism today.
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