Government

Wait, Whose Checkbook Did This Former Real World Star Use To Pay For Expenses At The Ritz-Carlton?

The true story of Sean Duffy's Cabinet nomination continues.

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House Republicans Sean Duffy

Sean Duffy (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

Real World Boston star and former competitive lumberjack Sean Duffy may have been dubbed Donald Trump’s “least embarrassing” Cabinet pick, but that’s damning with faint praise. As a recap, Duffy got the nod for Transportation Secretary from a fellow former reality TV star turned politician.

Duffy, a graduate of the William Mitchell College of Law, began his career as a prosecutor before winning a seat in the House of Representatives. In 2019 he resigned from Congress after his ninth child was diagnosed with health complications. (Yes, Duffy has 9(!) children with another Real World alum, Rachel Campos-Duffy, who, like her husband, is off the far-right deep end — she recently joined in Nancy Mace’s particularly mean-spirited form of transphobia. Pedro would be so disappointed.)

Now Bloomberg Law has a deep dive into how Duffy spent some of those campaign funds after he stepped away from politics.

Duffy, a former GOP congressman, held $2.1 million in his principal campaign committee as of Oct. 16, money that he has drawn on since leaving office in 2019, according to a Bloomberg Government analysis of Federal Election Commission documents. Duffy for Wisconsin, his campaign committee, disclosed paying the Ritz-Carlton more than $5,700 in March for what it described as “travel,” $2,800 in 2021, and $3,300 in 2020, FEC records show.

Saurav Ghosh, director at the Campaign Legal Center, points out some potential issues with those expenses, “Using campaign funds to pay for travel or meals or various other charges in connection with a campaign or official duties would not be permitted for someone long after they’ve left office because they are no longer serving or seeking elected office. The nexus that’s required to use campaign funds simply isn’t there.”

Not that Duffy is the first to use former campaign funds questionably.

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“Former members of Congress can use their excess campaign funds to make contributions to candidates, political parties and non-profit organizations, but they cannot convert those funds to personal use,” said Brett Kappel, a campaign finance lawyer at Harmon Curran. “Several former members have been fined by the FEC for using excess campaign funds to pay for personal travel.”

The FEC chided former Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) for using his old campaign funds for hotel stays, club dues, and meals and came to a “conciliation” agreement over the matter in 2019.

And Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United, put none too fine a point on it, saying, “If Sean Duffy can’t resist the urge to use his old campaign account as a personal slush fund, how can he be trusted to manage the Department of Transportation’s budget with integrity? His judgment is compromised and his ethics are questionable.”

But the Republican wagons are circling.

Lee Goodman, a former chair of the FEC and partner at the firm Wiley, said during an interview arranged by the Trump-Vance transition, that at least one of the Ritz-Carlton bills was to attend a fundraising retreat of the National Republican Congressional Committee, along with possibly family members of the former lawmaker. He said that would be deemed “permissible.”

“The dollar figures at issue here are not large, and the circumstances are all defensible,” Goodman said, adding that “even if there were questions about personal use” that “I’m certain the Federal Election Commission would not pursue enforcement action over them.”

“Defensible”? What was I saying about faint praise earlier?

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And the Trump-Vance transition team spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, called it a “non-story.”

Of course, compared with some of the other stories about other Cabinet nominees this may not have the juice to become a major scandal.

Kathryn Rubino HeadshotKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].

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