Betsy DeVos is President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Education Department. | Getty Trump's education secretary pick led group that owes millions in election fines

A school-choice advocacy group headed by billionaire Betsy DeVos owes the state of Ohio more than $5.3 million for election law violations — a record fine that is now nearly a decade past due.

DeVos is President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Education Department.


The unpaid fine dates back to 2008, when All Children Matter — a group that lobbied for school-choice legislation and was run by DeVos — broke Ohio election law by funneling $870,000 in contributions through its nationwide PAC to its Ohio affiliate, according to the Ohio Elections Commission.

The state commission told POLITICO that DeVos' group initially asked Ohio if this sort of spending was permissible. When the state said no, DeVos' group did it anyway.

"I've been with the commission since 1996 and I've never had anyone else ask for an advisory opinion and then proceed to not do what the opinion said," said Philip Richter, executive director and staff attorney at the Ohio Elections Commission.

Essentially, All Children Matter was pushing money through its national PAC, which was based in Virginia, where there are no limits on political contributions. Ohio has a $10,000 cap on individual gifts.

The elections commission slapped the two PACs with $2.6 million in fines — the largest ever levied by the state panel. Ohio's attorney general sought to collect on the fines and the groups appealed. After a lengthy legal battle, a judge ruled in the state's favor in 2013, saying All Children Matter, along with its affiliated PACs, owed the elections commission both the original fines and a late fee of $25 a day.

That late fee — also unpaid — now exceeds $91,000.

DeVos was not personally named in the case, but the judge ruled that All Children Matter, Inc., was liable. Tax filings from 2015 — the latest available — list DeVos as an officer for the group. In past statements, DeVos has identified herself as chair of the group.

DeVos could not be reached for comment.

A Trump transition team spokesman released the following statement: "This was nothing more than a partisan witch hunt by a Democratic Secretary of State to undermine Ms. DeVos’ courageous advocacy for Ohio children and families. This shows how desperate the failed establishment is to maintain the status quo. Ms. DeVos has stood up to them time and time again all over the country, and she will continue to fight as President-elect Trump’s Education Secretary."

Donald Brey, an Ohio attorney who represented All Children Matter in the case, said the transfer of funds from its Virginia-based national PAC to the Ohio group would be legal in a post-Citizens United world. But thetransfer happened two years before that landmark 2010 Supreme Court ruling.

"The reality is, the fine was for something that was later determined by the U.S. Supreme Court to be something that was unconstitutional for the state to prohibit," Brey said.

Court records suggest that Citizens United wasn't a factor in the All Children Matter case, and Brey said it's possible he never raised the issue during the court battle. All Children Matter lost its first lawsuit on purely procedural grounds — it had mistakenly sued the secretary of state instead of the elections commission. A second lawsuit, filed by the state, focused primarily on debt-collection efforts and whether the campaign treasurer for the two PACs could be held financially liable (she wasn't).

Brey said DeVos was not directly involved in the case, and he never spoke to her or even knew she had a role in the group.

"Her name never came up in any of the litigation," Brey said. "She was not a party, nobody ever claimed she did anything wrong, nobody claimed she was responsible for anything All Children Matter did or didn't do."

The DeVos family is extremely politically active, and has steered millions of dollars to Republicans who support school choice. But both of the DeVos PACs that were fined have since wounddown operations. A spokesman for the Ohio attorney general's office confirmed Monday that the PACs still owe the money.

"Collections are going to be difficult given that the organization was wound down," Ohio AG spokesman Dan Tierney said. "But it still remains an open matter."

The parent entity, All Children Matter, is also still active, but it only had $275 on hand at the end of 2015, according to tax filings. So far, Ohio hasn't attempted to seize that money.

