GOP Sen. Candidate Accused of ‘Outrageous’ Illegal Spending

With Roger Sollenberger, Political Reporter

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This week’s Big Dig . . . Inside A Watchdog’s New ‘Outrageous’ Personal Spending Allegations Against Senate Candidate Royce White

A new complaint targets “outrageous” spending by Republican senatorial candidate Royce White, arguing that his old campaign’s opaque reports and rampant splurges—including a $1,200 night at a Miami strip club—add up to a “wholesale failure” to follow the law and an attempt to cover it up.

The complaint, which the nonpartisan, nonprofit Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), comes after The Daily Beast revealed that White—the Minnesota Republican Party’s endorsed Senate candidate—appears to have illegally spent tens of thousands of dollars in donations to his failed 2022 campaign for a U.S. House seat.

CLC also alleges that the campaign’s reports habitually violated disclosure requirements. The complaint extends those allegations to White’s current Senate campaign, which to date has reported just one payment.

“Royce White appears to have brazenly violated the federal laws that foster transparency and accountability in our elections, by first using his 2022 campaign’s account to pay for personal expenses—including clothing, fitness, and entertainment charges, along with siphoning off a six-figure sum through checks and wire transfers—and then wholly failing to report his 2024 Senate campaign’s disbursements,” said Saurav Ghosh, CLC director of federal reform.

“It is imperative that the FEC investigate these apparent violations of the campaign finance laws.”

Rough draft

As The Daily Beast reported, White’s 2022 campaign logged eye-popping expenses, including more than $32,000 after White lost the primary, that campaign finance experts described as potentially criminal.

Much of the spending aligns with the travel schedule for a professional three-on-three basketball tournament in which White, a one-time first-round NBA draft pick, continued to compete while on the 2022 ballot. His three-on-three coach gave his campaign the maximum sum allowed, $2,900. The league’s co-founder, Jeff Kwatinetz, contributed $11,600, but the campaign never refunded the excess $8,700, as required by law.

Last month, White won the Minnesota GOP’s endorsement in a landslide. If he wins the August primary, he will face Democratic incumbent Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

The CLC complaint identifies more than $157,000 in potentially impermissible expenses incurred over White’s brief 2022 bid, including several large wire transfers and checks with no listed recipient or purpose.

A table included with the complaint breaks down some of the spending, including roughly $9,000 at retail shops, more than $8,300 at Best Buy, $5,100 for limo and private car services, and nearly $5,500 at nightspots including the $1,200 visit to Miami’s all-nude Gold Rush Cabaret strip club.

Flagrant foul

The law considers campaign expenses personal if donor funds are used for costs “that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s election campaign or individual’s duties as a holder of Federal office.”

Some of White’s expenses, CLC says, appear illegal “even without more information.”

The law, CLC notes, flatly prohibits campaign expenses for “household food items,” “clothing, other than items of de minimis value that are used in the campaign,” and “admission to a sporting event, concert, theater or other form of entertainment, unless part of a specific campaign or officeholder activity.”

(White told The Daily Beast the strip club expense—weeks after the primary—was legit because he’d done a campaign-related podcast in Florida. On that podcast, he admitted his campaign was over.)

The White campaign also reported unexplained disbursements to itself for more than $100,000 in “checks,” “outgoing wire transfers,” and cash withdrawals, which the CLC says “strongly indicates an effort to conceal the use of campaign funds to pay for personal expenses.”

Call bank

CLC argues that White’s previous campaign treasurers “should be held personally liable.” White became treasurer last October, and has not filed two required reports.

The FEC recently terminated the campaign, even though it has not remedied $33,700 in excessive donations and holds more than $17,000. As of publication, no notice was posted.

The complaint also cites “ample indication” that White’s Senate campaign has not disclosed numerous payments, citing a “polished website” and video with disclaimers stating “Paid for by Royce White For Senate.”

The Senate campaign has also solicited and received donations through WinRed, the GOP’s top online fundraising platform. But it has not reported any payments to WinRed for fundraising services.

That contrast suggests that White’s 2024 campaign “deliberately failed to comply with [The Federal Election Campaign Act’s] basic reporting requirements,” the complaint states.

The complaint cites White’s sweeping denials to The Daily Beast, saying, “[e]very dollar was spent on the campaign for campaign reasons.”

“These reductive summary statements offer no genuine explanation as to how these numerous payments from the campaign’s account, some of which post-dated the formal end of White’s 2022 candidacy, were bona fide campaign expenditures,” the complaint argues.

“Indeed, these charges appear to indicate that White was simply enriching himself at his donors’ expense, both before and after losing in the 2022 primary election.”

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Bazinga! The House Ethics Committee released a report this week finding that Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI) broke rules governing the personal use of campaign funds—but the committee took no further action, and instead blamed itself for not providing clear instructions.

“It is apparent to the Committee that all Members would benefit from more direct and updated guidance on how standards related to the personal use of campaign funds apply to the realities of their campaign,” the report said.

The report concluded that Huizenga and his staff “generally acted within the bounds of the law,” but found that some of the spending—specifically involving fundraising events at Disney World, Michigan’s Mackinac Island, and a Park City ski resort—“fell within unclear areas of FEC regulations.”

The investigation “did not reveal any pattern of clear personal use,” the committee said, that “the campaign did not fully comply” with reporting and reimbursement guidelines, “largely due to lack of knowledge or confusion about the applicable requirements.” Those “inadequate recordkeeping practices” constituted a violation of clause 6 of the House Code of Official Conduct, the committee found.

“In reviewing all such matters, it was apparent to the Committee that the House community would benefit from updated guidance on personal use of campaign funds and related recordkeeping expectations,” the report said, adding that the committee “will refresh its guidance to the House community on these issues based on lessons learned from this and other matters.”

Pop tart. A “pop-up” super PAC just caught a $25,000 penalty from the FEC for failing to properly report $2.5 million during the 2022 midterms. The fine—about 18 months after the election in which the violations occurred—illustrates the limits of disclosure laws even when they’re enforced.

“Pop-up” PACs are created close enough to an election that they don’t have to file a regular report until after ballots are cast, allowing them to keep their donors secret from the voting public. This group, the “Pennsylvania Lawyer Fund,” filed with the FEC just 11 days before the Nov. 8 midterms, then shelled out $2.5 million to support candidates from both parties in several states, all on Nov. 5. When the super PAC eventually disclosed its donors in its first regular filing after the election, OpenSecrets reported, the funds came from just one person—Allentown immigration attorney Raymond Lahoud.

However, the super PAC had not filed separate reports disclosing its $2.5 million in independent election spending, which are required within 24 hours, thereby keeping a lid not just on its donors, but on all election activity until after voters had cast their ballots. The FEC notified the group last March, and in response the super PAC apologized—and chalked up the failure to, of all things, being created so close to the election.

The failure, the PAC said, resulted in “an incorrect determination and inadvertent error in said determination as to whether a 24-hour report was due, given that [the Pennsylvania Lawyer Fund] was only formed on October 28, 2022 with the FEC.”

Pork barrel spending. The world’s largest meat producer has been posting a negative cash balance in its corporate PAC account.

The group, “JBS USA Food Company PAC,” is the political vehicle for JBS USA Foods, a subsidiary of Brazil-based multinational giant JBS S.A. This week, the PAC received FEC notices for its March, April, and May monthly reports, all of which posted negative balances. The May report (covering April) showed less than -$8,200, slightly up from the -$12,500 on hand at the end of March, the month the PAC contributed $15,500 to various federal campaigns and committees.

Those contributions came after the company found itself in hot water. On the last day of February, JBS—home to a smorgasbord of household brands including Country Pride, Certified Angus Beef, and Swift Meats—was sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James for making allegedly false statements about its environmental commitments in an effort to mislead eco-conscious consumers. Among the claims cited in the lawsuit was a full-page New York Times ad taken out in 2021, claiming in part, “Bacon, chicken wings and steak with net-zero emissions. It’s possible.”

Since January 2023, the PAC has raised a little more than $84,000 and clocked about $130,000 in contributions to federal committees and candidates of both parties—including $3,000 to Bill Huizenga in March.

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