Rep. Steve Watkins, R-Kansas, was charged with three counts of serious voter fraud and a misdemeanor after an investigation into his vote in a 2019 local election.
Watkins, a first-term congressman, was accused of voting without qualification, of interfering with law enforcement by providing false information and illegal early voting. Shawnee County District Attorney Mike Kagay, a fellow Republican, announced the charges Tuesday about 30 minutes before a televised debate between Watkins and his main opponents.
The congressman was also charged with a misdemeanor for failing to notify the DMV that his address had changed. Watkins, who was backed by President Donald Trump and is an honorary co-chair of Trump’s re-election campaign, denied the allegations.
Watkins, who won his 2018 career by just 0.8 percentage points in a district Trump won by 19 points, faced scrutiny from the Federal Election Commission scrutiny in an investigation into whether his father, Steve Watkins Sr., channeled money illegally. in his campaign through his daughters, a contractor, and the contractor’s wife.
Watkins denied that he was under investigation by the FEC, and his father stated that “he did not know that he was not allowed to do so.” Watkins won the race by less than 3,000 votes “thanks to the external spending of a group largely directed and financed by her father,” Politico reported.
The charges came after Topeka Capital-Journal reported last year that Watkins had changed his address on his voter registration to that of a UPS store in Topeka in a different district than he lived in before voting for a council race. of the city that was finally decided by only 13 votes. Watkins was living with her parents at the time, but “used the UPS address to hide that fact,” sources told the Kansas City Star.
If found guilty, Watkins would face up to 17 months in prison for the vote without being charged as qualified and up to nine months in prison for each of the other two felony charges.
The Watkins campaign said the media were notified of the charges to their lawyers.
“I have done nothing wrong,” Watkins said in Tuesday’s debate minutes after the news was released, calling the timing of the charges “highly suspicious” and “highly political.”
“I hope to clear my name,” he added. “I have done nothing wrong and I hope to set the record straight.”
Top challenger Jake LaTurner, the state treasurer, addressed the issue, arguing that “our current congressman with three felony charges and one misdemeanor is not the person” with the best chance of winning the general election.
“They are shocked that Steve Watkins has found someone else to blame for voting illegally and lying to a law enforcement officer,” his spokesman Kaya Zeyer told The Star.
Democrats also convicted him after the charges were announced.
“If you want to be trusted with the writing of our laws, you must at least follow them,” Brooke Goren, spokeswoman for the Democratic Congress Campaign Committee, told the media. “Steve Watkins has shown that he cannot pass this basic test, and it is clear why the Kansans are ready for a change.”
Watkins said in the debate that he has cooperated with the investigation and immediately corrected his record.
“As soon as I realized that I had put my mailing address instead of my physical address, we fixed it,” he said.
LaTurner responded by pointing out that Watkins’ ties to the district he represents are tenuous at best, and blame his own actions for the legal problem.
“Listen, Steve Watkins needs to take responsibility for the decisions he’s made,” LaTurner told KSHB. “No one makes Steve buy a house in the Second Congressional District. No one makes Steve lie on government documents and sign his name under penalty of perjury, and certainly no one makes Steve lie to the police.”
Watkins came under fire before the 2018 election after The Associated Press reported that he had falsely claimed that he ran and grew a small business and exaggerated a heroic story about climbing Mt. Everest.
“We are only talking for two years,” a local Republican county president told McClatchy after the report. “If we find out that that’s true and that it really isn’t what it says it is, we’ll replace it in two years, I guess.”
