Courtesy Patel for PA
Bhavini Patel is challenging Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District.
As first-term Congresswoman Summer Lee (D-PA) faces an onslaught of far-right cash attacking her in her April 23 primary, a Prospect investigation has found that the main beneficiary of that spending, local official and primary opponent Bhavini Patel, failed to disclose a substantial gift she received, in violation of campaign finance laws. Additionally, a review of publicly available information has found that Patel may be engaged in a complex scheme to elide federal campaign finance limits, and failed to make required personal financial disclosures during her abortive 2022 campaign for Congress.
The revelations come as a super PAC backed by Jeffrey Yass, the largest Republican donor in 2024, has spent $606,000 attacking Lee and boosting Patel, according to a review of federal campaign finance records. Patel has also received significant fundraising assistance from groups like the Hindu American PAC, which works to elect candidates supportive of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi is a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the world’s largest far-right organization, whose early leaders effusively praised Hitler and cooperated with British rule. Last year, a member of Modi’s cabinet called Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, who was a member of the RSS, a “worthy son” of India. The RSS has a major network in the U.S., and figures active in that network have fundraised for Patel, The Intercept reported in February.
Super PACs supporting pro-Israel candidates, like Democratic Majority for Israel and United Democracy Project, have stayed out of the race, despite making Rep. Lee one of their top targets previously.
Patel is a member of the Edgewood, Pennsylvania, Borough Council. Had she been in elective office in December 2020, she would have been required to disclose a substantial gift she received then, wherein she was deeded onto a house with a market value of about $110,000 for the price of $1—a gift with an approximate value of $55,000.
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The person who deeded her the house is named Vinay Patidar. Both Patidar and Patel are unmarried. As she is currently unemployed while running for Congress, the rental income from both this house in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, and another house in Pittsburgh that she used the home in Monroeville as collateral for, provides the majority of her income, disclosures show. Those same disclosures show that she received between $15,000 and $50,000 in rental income for the Monroeville property, which Patidar continued to list as his address on an October 2021 mortgage application. Even just $15,000 in annual rent for a $110,000 property with just 50 percent ownership of the home is well above market value, according to a Prospect analysis of local rents.
In October 2021, Patidar and Patel received what appears to be a home equity line of credit for $130,000, which Patel almost certainly used to purchase a house in Swissvale, Pennsylvania, for exactly $130,000 the following month. The Swissvale house, however, is exclusively in Patel’s name—so the home equity line of credit likely produced an additional $65,000 gift from Patidar, on top of the $55,000 stake she received in December 2020. Patel never disclosed a $65,000 gift from Patidar in her 2021 filing, where Patel erroneously stated that she had no real property interests. The Prospect was able to track Patel’s real estate stakes from a review of Allegheny County property records.
Failure to make required disclosures is a misdemeanor, with fines of up to $1,000 and up to a year’s incarceration. Patel elected to file her 2021 statement of financial interests with the Pennsylvania Ethics Commission, which is how the Prospect was able to access it. Typically, local officeholders like Patel only file their statements with the local body they serve. Edgewood Borough, where she serves on the council, only made her 2022 statement of financial interests available after repeated requests by the Prospect, and Patel only filed it on April 5, 2024, 11 months after it was due and three days after the Prospect began asking Patel questions about the disclosure.
Patel also failed to make a required personal financial disclosure to the House of Representatives as a candidate for Congress in 2022, according to a search of personal financial disclosure records on the website of the House of Representatives. Patel entered the race around January 12, 2022, and did not exit until March 11, 2022, saying that “the campaign didn’t gain the momentum.” Patel raised well in excess of the $5,000 minimum—Vinay Patidar donated $2,900, the maximum at the time, to her campaign the day after she filed—and was campaigning longer than the 30-day minimum, meaning that she was required to file a personal financial disclosure under federal law. Failure by a congressional candidate to file personal financial disclosures is punishable by fines of up to $50,000.
Patel is the only candidate Patidar has ever supported, according to Opensecrets.org. In December 2023, Patidar donated an additional $1,500 to Patel’s current campaign.
“The personal financial disclosure forms are critical elements for the public and voters to discern whether there are serious conflicts of interest,” said Craig Holman, a governmental affairs lobbyist with the good-government group Public Citizen. “Any candidate that fails to file a personal financial disclosure should be seriously fined.”
Patel’s campaign failed to respond to repeated requests for comment from the Prospect. Patidar also did not respond to a request for comment.
Larry Noble, a former general counsel with the Federal Election Commission, raised the concern that Patidar’s dealings with Patel could be an illegal campaign contribution. “The first question is if the real estate transactions were done for the purpose of giving her an income, and she did not in some way pay for her share of the house. Then there’s an issue of whether or not that’s an illegal campaign contribution. If they want to say, ‘Oh we’re partners, [I’m] sharing my house with her,’ then that would be at least something we would have to consider. But it does raise the issue of whether this is an illegal campaign contribution on his behalf.”
Noble said that the essential question for campaign finance regulators would be if Patel provided some type of undisclosed compensation for Patidar giving his $65,000 stake in the home equity line of credit loan.
“If she gives him something else in return, then they can say that’s more of a fair trade; if it appears to be just a gift to her, then it could be seen as a campaign contribution,” Noble said.
“If what he was doing was giving her a place to live and not charging rent or anything for it, that would be one thing, but historically if somebody paid someone running for Congress a salary, that’s an illegal campaign contribution, even if the Republican FEC members wouldn’t say that. If you are subsidizing a candidate, that could be seen as an illegal campaign contribution.”
