A spokesman for the Republican National Committee says the committee is investigating a nearly $2,000 expenditure at an L.A. nightclub that regularly features topless dancers, and asking the staffer who spent it to return the money.
“We are investigating the expenditure in question,” said the spokesman in a statement. He also pushed back against the original Daily Caller story, which in detailing the spending, said, RNC Chairman Michael “Steele travels in style.”
“The story willfully and erroneously suggests that the expenditure in question was one belonging to the Chairman. This was a reimbursement made to a non-committee staffer. The Chairman was never at the location in question, he had no knowledge of the expenditure, nor does he find the use of committee funds at such a location at all acceptable,” he wrote. “Good reporting would make that distinction crystal clear. The committee has requested that the monies be returned to the committee and that the story be corrected so that it is accurate.”
Late update: The Daily Caller pegs the person who spent the money as one Erik Brown of Orange, Calif. Brown owns a direct mailing firm and has tweeted about hanging out with Steele. (Here’s the cached link. Brown’s Twitter account was deleted today.)
And, according to the Caller, Brown’s firm has done work for Steve Poizner’s California gubernatorial campaign, to the tune of $10,000.
Neither Brown nor a spokesperson for Poizner immediately returned a request for comment.
Late late update: RNC spokesman Doug Heye, on Fox News just now, said the party has gotten a commitment that the money will be repaid. Heye wouldn’t name who spent the money.
