The Vaping Congressman Spent $1,302 of His Campaign Funds Last Year on Video Games
According to his year-end campaign finance disclosure for 2015, Rep. Duncan Hunter, Republican from California, a.k.a. the Vaping Congressman, spend $1,302 on Steam Games from October 13 to December 16. This was, according to the filing, a “personal expense — to be paid back.”
On Monday, the Federal Election Commission submitted a letter to Hunter’s campaign treasurer asking for further explanation. (The letter also raised questions about a payment of $1,650 in September to Christian Unified Schools of El Cajon, which Hunter’s spokesman said was a donation misidentified as a personal expense.) The San Diego Union-Tribune reports:
Hunter’s spokesman, Joe Kasper, said the congressman’s teenage son used his father’s credit card for one game, and then several unauthorized charges resulted after the father tried to close access to the website. Kasper said that Hunter is trying to have the unauthorized charges reversed before repaying his campaign account.
“There won’t be any paying anything back there, pending the outcome of the fraud investigation, depending on how long that takes,” Kasper said.
In 2013, Hunter wrote a passionate op-ed for Politico defending the value of video games against their haters: “With fingers pointing in nearly every direction, video games are often, but wrongly, identified as a catalyst for violence.”
Unfortunately, the year-end disclosures do not identify what games Hunter was (accidentally?) paying for, or why he (or his son) paid so much for them. The congressman has until May 9 to respond to the FEC.