Republican Election Scandals

Diverted more than $25,000 in campaign contributions to an entity that he was the sole proprietor of and was located at his home address by falsely claiming the money was used to pay rent on office space for his political campaign

Stole over $132,000 from multiple political accounts to pay for vacations with his family, housing costs and personal credit card statements by siphoning money from a loosely regulated political account that prosecutors alleged he used as his own "unregulated slush fund" into his own pocket

Illegally voted in nine elections between 2008 and 2011 while he was on probation for a prior felony conviction and ineligible to vote in Georgia while also having hypocritically spread baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election and was later fined $5,000 and given a public reprimand by the judge overseeing his case

Fraudulently claimed a 5-by-5-foot closet-size space he rented for $5 a month was his official residence in order to run for office in a district he didn't actually live in

Illegally transferred $91,000 from his political campaign and a nonprofit organization to an authorized federal campaign committee supporting his candidacy using money not subject to reporting regulations to help his 2016 bid for US Congress and then hid the transactions from the FEC

Forged thousands of fake signatures over hundreds of petitions his third-party company conducted that the State AG charged were full of “obvious fraud” and done in such a “sophomoric” way that he misspelled people's names and cities and had signatures of people who were dead or had moved and then submitted them to candidates who contracted his services and proceeded to inadvertently submit the fraudulent petition signatures to election officials

Illegally transferred $82.5 million from his state political action committee to a super PAC supporting his Presidential bid in violation of a federal campaign finance law that prohibits candidates from spending money that was obtained by people and groups not subject to strict federal requirements

Spent $17,303 in campaign funds on personal expenses including family vacations, a professional baseball game, $2,400 worth of clothing and his children's cellphone bills and also failed to provide proper documentation for over $53,000 worth of meals he charged at taxpayers' expense

Defrauded a donor who gave him $535,200 to use on his campaign which he diverted to his personal business accounts instead and broke campaign finance laws by not disclosing it in a scheme multiple campaign finance experts called “unprecedented,” “stunning,” and “jaw-dropping”

Refused to publicly release a final report his own staff spent 10,000 hours on that debunked 2020 election conspiracy theories because it didn't back up his claim that the election was rife with fraud after he publicly claimed he had found "serious vulnerabilities" in the voting system which wasn't true

Illegally spent over $100,000 in campaign contributions on personal expenses and then tried to cover it up by filing numerous false tax returns

Illegally accepted over $25,000 in campaign contributions from a single family member far exceeding the $5,600 legal limit per person

Repeatedly injected himself into special counsel John Durham's political investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia scandal in order to help Trump and discredit his detractors which led to his second in command resigning in protest and another taking a new job outside of the investigation

Submitted dozens of phony voter registrations, absentee ballot requests and absentee ballots in the 2020 Iowa Republican primary in an attempt to help her husband Jeremy Taylor's campaign for the US House

Broke state law barring PACs from coordinating with local and state political parties by encouraging a Republican state PAC to pay $52,000 for an investigation into the Democratic candidate for governor

Suspiciously listed 37 campaign expenses on purchases like a hotel stay in Miami and other travel expenses as costing $199.99 -- one cent below the legally binding $200 threshold that required itemized receipts -- on his campaign finance forms

Voted using his former invalid address instead of the one he actually lived at in a different county 60 miles away in the 2022 primary, general and U.S. Senate runoff elections

Repeatedly voted with an illegal ID card that implied he was a state employee

Filled out and submitted eight absentee ballots for unwitting voters without their knowledge or consent by taking advantage of his position on a local elections board to access their voter information

Made illegal campaign contributions and filed false financial reports to cover it up to promote an independent "ghost candidate" who got 4,800 votes likely swinging the election to the Republican who won by a narrow 300 votes

Forged signatures on at least nine absentee voter applications for people who were unaware he was submitting the request and lied to the county clerk by attesting he had permission to deliver the applications

Cast two ballots in other people's names in a general election and in one other person's name in a primary election held in 2021

Used $1,929.07 in campaign funds to pay for 11 months' worth of dues to gain "unlimited access" to a private social and dining club located in Texas

Spent $3,147.06 in campaign funds to pay for an extravagant dinner at a private social and dining club that the nonpartisan Office of Congressional Ethics reported was likely a personal expense and not a fundraising event as he claimed

Spent roughly $100,000 in campaign donations on personal expenses that included a down payment on a home, luxury cars and childcare expenses

Illegally voted in multiple elections and even represented a district he didn't actually live in after using his parents address as his own on his voter registration

Allowed an unauthorized individual to make copies of voting machine hard drives and attend a voting machine software update intended only for credentialed election officials

Registered to vote from NC mobile home he never visited in violation of state law that says it's illegal to vote from an address where you are not a legal resident

Accepted a $30,200 campaign contribution from Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury through three "straw donors" and then lied to federal authorities after they confronted him about it

Funneled $25,000 of a Russian oligarch's money to the Trump 2016 campaign in exchange for a ticket and access to Trump during a Republican National Committee event

Voted twice using two different but similar sounding names in the 2020 election

Snorted cocaine with a paid escort he also presumably had sex with inside an Orlando hotel room he paid for with campaign funds

Donated nearly $45,000 to a fake independent candidate who shared the same last name as the Democratic nominee for a state senate race to confuse voters and siphon votes from the incumbent in an election which was won by Republican Ileana Garcia by just 32 votes

Pressured Georgia's Secretary of State to illegally "find 11,780 votes" that would overturn Joe Biden's 2020 victory in the state

Spent over $200,000 in campaign funds on personal expenses including his mortgage and cars

Funneled hundreds of millions of dollars through two shell companies connected to his son-in-law to hide its spending during the 2020 Presidential campaign

Unsuccessfully pushed Georgia's Secretary of State to illegally discard thousands of legally cast ballots from the 2020 Presidential election

Illegally funneled $40,500 in campaign contributions from an Indiana casino through "straw donors" who were reimbursed through faked consulting fees

Illegally used a local UPS store as his legal address for voting purposes in violation of state election law

Asked people who no longer lived in her home district to break the law and vote there anyway in two different elections, one of which she only won by 117 votes

Violated campaign finance law by coordinating with a Super PAC that ran political attack ads against his opponents without reporting the ads as a gift as required by state and federal law and was fined $178,000 by The Missouri Ethics Commission

Illegally paid adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money to keep her from going public about an extramarital affair they had by directing his personal lawyer Michael Cohen to pay her off and agreeing to reimburse him in monthly installments one month before the 2016 election in violation of campaign-finance laws

Lied on an official document by attesting that a campaign donor's home he and his family were temporarily residing in was his official address which allowed him to run for a state congressional district that he otherwise wouldn't have been able to since his permanent address was outside district lines

Stole $159k from his election campaign and spent it on personal expenses by routing funds through a political consulting firm that in turn paid him over a series of transactions

Forged more than 100 signatures on a candidate petition to ensure he could get on the ballot for the 2018 Republican primary

Voted in a district he no longer resided in and later unsuccessfully tried to bribe a local Housing Authority employee into falsifying a letter to election officials that attested he had only temporarily moved out of the district in exchange for a donation to the county Housing Authority

Gave $29,800 in campaign funds to a professional gambler with a long criminal record and an additional $25,000 to his wife, illegally reimbursed himself $11,946.65 from his campaign account for expenses he provided no documentation of and spent thousands more on personal expenses including an airplane ticket for his wife, custom suits, spa products, sunglasses, lawncare and paint for his home office, among many other things

Illegally spent more than $100,000 in campaign funds to invest in a wealthy GOP donor's company

Violated campaign-finance laws by paying former Playboy Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal $150,000 in hush money to keep her from going public about an extramarital affair they had by orchestrating a convoluted payment scheme involving his lawyer Michael Cohen and the tabloid National Enquirer a week and a half before the 2016 election

Illegally paid Iowa state senator Kent Sorenson $73,000 to switch his 2016 Presidential candidate endorsement from Michelle Bachmann to Ron Paul and then falsified campaign reports to cover it up

Stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from his campaign to spend on everyday personal expenses like family vacations, private school tuition and jewelry so he could live the opulent lifestyle his taxpayer funded salary didn't provide

Lied about the origins of a $355,000 loan to his 2010 congressional campaign that his parents gave him by falsely asserting the money came from earnings he made working in the private sector

Illegally accepted more than $30k from her husband who used four "straw donors" to conceal that the money came from him

Illegally paid a convicted felon $35,000 under the table to work on her 2012 Republican congressional campaign instead of using campaign funds as required by law

Fraudulently concealed a $500k campaign contribution from her husband by falsely reporting the money came from her personal accounts and illegally used her husband's business resources to help her campaign by having his employees moonlight as unofficial campaign staff

Received nearly $50,000 he was not entitled to after he lied about driving 90,000 more miles than he actually did in reimbursement forms he filed with the government and his campaign

Illegally used his family, employees and friends as "straw donors" to donate $100k each to two political candidates and later interfered with the criminal case by attempting to influence a government witness

Secretly siphoned hundreds of thousands of dollars in unreported campaign donations to his personal accounts and used the money on a myriad of personal expenses including his personal credit card and only escaped charges because he exploited a little-known loophole in Florida's campaign finance laws

Paid two felons who weren't legally eligible to vote $2 per signature to fraudulently sign off on petitions for a local ballot proposal he supported

Funneled $400k in insurance premiums from a company he owned to his congressional campaign and then later transferred ownership of the company to his wife