Feds Let GOP Candidate Pay Jan. 6 Costs with Campaign Cash

With Roger Sollenberger, Political Reporter

With Roger on a well-deserved break for the next two weeks, we’ll do our best to keep you in the loop by highlighting his previous Pay Dirt hits, and rounding up the can’t-miss stories by our Politics team.

The Big Dig this week… How Feds let a GOP candidate pay Jan. 6 costs with campaign cash

Candidates can get away with using campaign donations to travel to an insurrection, according to a new Federal Election Commission decision—as long as they’re thrifty.

That’s the upshot for Derrick Van Orden, the Republican congressional candidate from Wisconsin who dipped into donor funds to bankroll a trip to D.C., where, as The Daily Beast reported last year, he appeared on Capitol grounds during the Jan. 6 riot.

As often happens in politically charged decisions, the Democratic and Republican commissioners released competing explanations. In this case, those statements had one key difference: The Democrats condemned the expenses; the Republicans were silent. Read more>>

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