AG Ford Donates $16k to Charity After Receiving Errant Campaign Contributions

Nevada's Attorney General, Aaron Ford, received donations from a California family allegedly involved in a campaign contribution laundering scheme. Attorney General Ford announced his team would donate the $16,000 received to charity.

During his 2022 re-election campaign, Democrat Ford received $16,000 from David Duong, CEO of California Waste Solutions, and his son Andy Duong.

2 News Nevada dug through campaign contribution records for Attorney General Ford in 2022: 

After making his first donation, Andy Duong posted a picture on Instagram with Attorney General Ford, captioned "supporting our phenomenal leader, Aaron Ford, Attorney General of Nevada. Go team #fordfornevada #LB1111." Duong also tagged Attorney General Ford in the post.

According to an ongoing investigation by KRON4, the Duong family's company, Cal Waste Solutions, has been the subject of an FBI investigation for allegedly running a straw donor money laundering scheme starting in 2019 and spanning several election cycles.

In June, the FBI raided Cal Waste Solutions, the homes of Dave and Andy Duong, and Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao in connection with the scheme. Oakland Mayor Sheng and the Duong family maintain their innocence, and details of the FBI investigation have not been disclosed.

Wealthy special interests often try to hide their political spending by using shell companies, intermediary entities, or "straw donors" to conceal the true source and total amount of their political contributions.

The records showed that Attorney General Ford was the only Nevada politician who received donations from the Duongs. In addition, many California politicians also received contributions from the Duongs, including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), California Assemblymember Evan Low (D), and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).

In a statement from his campaign on Monday, Ford said that he intended to donate the contributions to charities, following the example of several other California elected officials.

We interviewed a Republican candidate for the Assembly Rafael Arroyo regarding the ongoing ethics inquiries surrounding Nevada state politics.

"I would say yeah, accepting the money is an issue, but he's trying to correct it; I'll give him some credit there. But, we need to be more vigilant at what we're doing from an ethics perspective in the state legislature and government in general," said Republican candidate for (AD 41) Rafael Arroyo.

There have been ethics and transparency issues in Nevada's state government. In April, we covered a story about Assemblywoman Heidi Kasama introducing a series of new bill draft requests (BDRs) to improve transparency and accountability in the Nevada Legislature. In the article, we discussed recent allegations of conflicts of interest.

Assemblywoman Kasama Gets Blowback After Proposing Ethics Rules

"At the end of the day, you know, if you're the candidate, you're accountable, but I would say look, most of these guys have a team for that stuff, and they need to make sure they hold their teams accountable. If you have someone taking donations on your behalf, you're paying the company maybe for a complaint; you've got to make sure they're doing the right thing and looking for these conflicts," Rafael Arroyo said. 

In the interest of providing equal time for candidates, we interviewed Democrat Assembly Majority Floor Leader Sandra Jauregui, who is defending her seat against Arroyo, about her successful legislation to ban bump stocks in Nevada. 

Assembly Majority Leader Sandra Jauregui responds to SCOTUS bump stock ban reversal: 

We tried to contact Attorney General Aaron Ford's team, but we haven't received a response yet.

Last week, Attorney General Ford issued a statement after learning about the mistaken contributions: "After seeing reports on this matter, which was the first time I learned of the allegations, I have chosen to donate the contributions my campaign received to charitable organizations," Ford said.