Lauren Boebert wasn’t fooling anyone with her “lipstick” photo earlier this week, but a more tried-and-true theme is now back to rear its head. That would be the world of sketchy campaign finance, and discussions of that variety haven’t been kind to Boebert, given previous allegations (via The Denver Post) that she claimed enough mileage expenses in 2020 to root and toot herself a third of the way around the Earth’s circumference. The Republican lawmaker also allegedly paid rent and bills for her (now-defunct) restaurant with campaign dollars, and now, Boebert is being accused of a relatively astronomic sum for campaign calls and texts.
$60,000 would be the alleged (illegal) figure, according to Newsweek, which adds that Boebert managed to rack up that bill for the 2022 midterm election that she narrowly won (Democrat Adam Frisch has since decided to run against her for 2024). How, exactly, does one rack up $60,000 in calls in texts within one’s own district? That’s a mystery, but Newsweek has the details from an FEC complaint:
End Citizens United has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging the Republican’s political action committee spent tens of thousands of dollars on so-called “get out the vote” contact calls and texts that were not reported accurately.
According to the FEC filing, seen exclusively by Newsweek, Boebert, her campaign Lauren Boebert For Colorado, We The People Leadership PAC and Taylor Moose, her PAC and campaign treasurer, are accused of failing to accurately report communications as independent expenditures or in-kind contributions on their reports filed with the Commission.
It’s not great, given that there’s a $5,000 limit on in-kind contributions to one’s self, if that’s what this actually is, because man, how does one spend twelve times that on phone calls and texts? I realize that I’ve asked that question a few times already, but this is as bizarre as claiming to have trotted out 8,000-ish miles of road-based campaign travel during the Covid shutdown when little in-person campaigning was in the works. Politics!
(Via Newsweek)