Qasim Rashid is a Con-Man
Richmond, VA – Democrat candidate for Congress in Virginia’s First Congressional District, Qasim Rashid, has been taking money from his own campaign to pay himself a salary. According to his FEC Form 3 Reports of Receipts and Disbursements dated 7/1/2020 and 7/15/2020, Rashid received disbursements that total $18,014.37 as of the most recent filing. Rashid began paying himself from his “Rashid for VA” account beginning in January 2020 when he formally declared as a candidate. Rashid’s financial disclosure forms show no earnings from any job in 2019 and 2020, save for payments he made to himself from his campaign.
Rashid went up on television earlier this month with an ad that focuses on his work as a “human rights lawyer” potentially misleading voters into thinking he is a practicing lawyer. While that was the case years ago, he most certainly cannot claim to be a practicing attorney currently. He spent less than a year as an attorney at Karamah, a human rights organization, from May 2016 to April 2017, but records reveal that he hasn’t done any human rights work in court for several years. According to legal databases including Pacer, UniCourt, and the Virginia Judicial System records, there is no “Qasim Rashid” listed as the attorney of record in recent history. Also, according to this interview last week, he is currently unemployed, outside of taking a paycheck from his campaign donors.
As far as records show, one of the longest careers Qasim Rashid has ever held was at an admissions office of a for-profit, online college investigated for its deceptive recruiting and enrollment practices. Qasim Rashid was the Associate Director of Admissions for Kaplan University from 2006-2009 – a predatory for-profit online University plagued with scandal. Yet Qasim Rashid has completely scrubbed the mention of Kaplan off of all materials, including his LinkedIn page. He also went one step further and harshly criticized online universities as “a scam” in a Democrat primary debate just earlier this year.
“Qasim Rashid’s only recent job is being a candidate paid by his campaign committee with his donors’ money,” said RPV Chairman Rich Anderson. “He claims to be a human rights attorney, but has little work history to back that up. Why has he gone through such lengths to hide his previous employment history? Does he truly believe for-profit online universities are a scam, or is he telling the voters what he thinks they want to hear? The people of Virginia’s First District deserve better than a radically liberal con-man.”
