A campaign finance lawyer flags this part of the Washington Post‘s story on Newt Gingrich’s massive $1.2 million campaign debt:
One of the campaign’s biggest creditors is Gingrich himself, who billed the campaign more than $125,000 for a mailing list and travel expenses, about half of which remained unpaid at the end of last quarter.
Hammond said that about $42,000 of the debt owed to Gingrich in the second quarter was for the cost of the candidate’s personal mailing list, which he sold to the campaign. Hammond said Gingrich was paid for the list in the third quarter. The payment does not appear to be disclosed as required on Federal Election Commission reports, something Hammond said might have been an oversight.
Other than the fact that it looks like Gingrich put paying himself ahead of paying the other people his campaign owes money for expenses like private jets, not reporting the fact that the campaign paid Gingrich $42,000 is a clear violation of disclosure laws enforced by the Federal Election Commission. His campaign owed him $69,846.87 as of their last report, according to FEC records.
We’ve reached out to Gingrich’s spokesman to ask when his campaign records will reflect a $42,000 payment to Gingrich and will update if we hear back.
