The Federal Elections Commission seems to have found some not-too honest money in the coffers of Democratic Senate Challenger Beto O’Rourke.
According to the Daily Caller, the FEC has flagged O’Rourke’s campaign for accepting “excessive” and “impermissible” donations from individuals from outside of the country.
1/ Campaign of @BetoORourke flagged by @FEC for accepting “excessive” and “impermissible” contributions. pic.twitter.com/QcGGsbiTC3
— Dave Levinthal (@davelevinthal) October 1, 2018
2/ Not uncommon for campaigns, like that of @BetoORourke, that are raising a ton of cash — D or R — to have some campaign $$ screw-ups. But the screw-ups must get dealt with nevertheless. pic.twitter.com/85FbKBotKX
— Dave Levinthal (@davelevinthal) October 1, 2018
As Dave Levinthal of Publici notes, this isn’t necessarily uncommon for campaigns that receive large amounts of donations so quickly, but they haven’t been dealt with yet.
Now that it’s gone public, it’s likely that the O’Rourke campaign will act very quickly to correct the error. However, O’Rourke isn’t typically known for correcting errors until he’s caught, and has a history of taking money that he’s not supposed to, dating all the way back to his days as an El Paso city council member.
As the Daily Caller notes, this information was made available the night that O’Rourke was supposed to debate incumbent Ted Cruz, yet it seems that O’Rourke chose instead to make a political campaign ad on Facebook Live:
The warning from the FEC came on the same evening that O’Rourke was scheduled to debate Sen. Ted Cruz at the University of Houston. The El Paso congressman declined Cruz’s invitation to the debate, instead live streaming his repeated attempts at making a campaign ad. O’Rourke notably avoided committing to any debates against Cruz for weeks during the summer, and even bowed out of the first tentatively scheduled debate saying he was unhappy that he didn’t get a big enough say in the terms.
There seems to be a lot of shadiness surrounding O’Rourke, and choosing to monologue over a debate the night campaign finance reform violations are brought up doesn’t help the El Paso Democrat gain any credibility.
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