Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Indicted lawmaker loses panel jobs
Californian accused of misusing campaign funds faces rebuke
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., indicted on charges of using hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds for personal expenses, has been stripped of his committee assignments by the House speaker and urged to resign by the chamber’s top Democrat.
Hunter, 41, faced the swift, bipartisan rebuke after federal prosecutors on Tuesday unveiled criminal charges against him and his wife, Margaret, 43. The U.S. attorney’s office of the Southern District of California, which filed the charges, said the Hunters improperly accessed more than $250,000 in campaign money.
According to the indictment, campaign funds were used to pay for personal expenses like family vacations, school tuition and dental work, as well as smaller purchases including fast food and movie tickets. Hunter, a five-term congressman who represents the San Diego area, also is accused of filing false campaign records with the Federal Election Commission.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., in a statement Tuesday night called the charges against Hunter “deeply serious” and said he would be stripped of his assignments. He is a member of the Armed Services, Transportation and Infrastructure Committees and the Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Hunter referred to the U.S. Justice Department as “the Democrats’ arm of law enforcement” and said the FBI and the department are “a politically motivated group of folks.”
“We are seeing this with President [Donald] Trump; we are seeing this with my case,” Hunter said Wednesday in a statement. “This is evidenced by the fact that after two years of investigating, the Department of Justice decided to take this action right before my election.”
In an interview Wednesday, Hunter said he’s “excited about going to trial with this, frankly.”
“This is modern politics, and modern media mixed in with law enforcement that has a political agenda. That’s the new Department of Justice,” Hunter told KGTV in San Diego.
The indictment was announced less than two weeks after Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., was charged with insider trading in Manhattan Federal Court. Hunter and Collins were the first House members to endorse the presidential candidacy of Trump, on Feb. 24, 2016.
Top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi of California said that “the charges against Congressman Hunter are further evidence of the rampant culture of corruption among Republicans in Washington today.” She asked Ryan to demand Hunter’s resignation.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat and potential 2020 presidential contender, used Twitter to urge her supporters to donate to Hunter’s Democratic rival.
Hunter, a former combat Marine who served in Iraq, represents California’s 50th congressional district, which includes parts of San Diego and Riverside counties. Elected in 2008, he succeeded his father, also named Duncan Hunter.
Among the personal expenditures Duncan and Margaret Hunter paid for with campaign money were a $14,000 family Thanksgiving vacation to Italy, a $6,500 excursion to Hawaii, and a $3,700 trip to Las Vegas and Boise, Idaho, according to the 47-page indictment.
In March 2015, Hunter told his wife he was planning “to buy my Hawaii shorts” but had run out of money, according to the indictment filed in federal court in San Diego. She advised him to buy the shorts at a golf pro shop so they could describe the expense as golf balls “for the wounded warriors,” a service organization for veterans.
The Hunters also paid their dental bills, their children’s tuition and thousands of dollars in groceries and meals with campaign funds, prosecutors said. They overdrew their bank account more than 1,100 times in a seven-year period, according to the charges.
Prosecutors said that to hide the personal nature of their spending, the Hunters “mischaracterized the purchases in FEC filings as ‘campaign travel,’ ‘dinner with volunteers/contributors,’ ‘toy drives,’ ‘teacher/parent and supporter events,’ ‘gift cards’ for charitable donations, and ‘gift basket items,’” among other false descriptions.
A pending House Ethics Committee investigation of Hunter regarding alleged misuse of campaign funds was previously announced by the panel and deferred at the request of the Justice Department.
Gregory Vega, a lawyer for Hunter, said in an Aug. 6 letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, which was provided to Bloomberg News by Hunter’s office, that the indictment “will result in a solidly Republican district being handed to a Democratic candidate who garnered a mere 16 percent of the vote in the primary.”
Hunter’s Democratic opponent, Ammar Campa-Najjar, said that the indictment “confirms just how deep this corruption can reach when someone like Duncan Hunter Jr. is in it for himself instead of representing the people.”
But Campa-Najjar stopped short of calling on the congressman to resign.
“I think justice should run its course,” he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Edvard Pettersson and Billy House of Bloomberg News; and by Michael R. Blood, Julie Watson, John Antczak, Christopher Weber, Robert Jablon and Michael Balsamo of The Associated Press.