If you thought that Lauren Boebert tweeting about Magic Mike was the end of the rootin’ and tootin’ for the day, well, there is always room for more. And things are rather astronomical here in the sense that she allegedly made up an un-Earthly amount of mileage (more than our planet’s circumference) to deduct as campaign expenses, apparently associated with her Colorado district.
Even if Boebert had driven around all of the Rocky Mountains (many times apiece), she likely could not have achieved this number, but this is also a lawmaker who used campaign expenses to pay rent and utilities, which is also quite illegal. The New York Times dug into the newest potentially fraudulent set of financials, which revealed how Boebert inflated 2020 mileage expenses and used campaign reimbursements to sort out tax liens on Shooter’s Grill. Raw Story summarizes the gist of this situation:
“Utilizing an illegal source of funds or ill-gotten funds to pay off a tax lien is illegal in Colorado and under federal law,” reads a complaint sent to the Colorado attorney general’s office by the the American Muckrakers PAC. “That is the very definition of ill-gotten funds.”
The allegations against Boebert were first reported in February 2021, claiming that Boebert had cashed two checks from her campaign totaling $22,259 for mileage reimbursement, but that figure worked out to 38,712 miles — which is significantly further than the planet’s 24,901-mile circumference.
Again, it’s wild to believe that Boebert believed that the mileage figures would pass muster, especially when she wasn’t running a nationwide campaign, but alright! The New York Times did confirm that the mileage/tax lien situation is being further investigated by an interagency group, and it’s a subject that will likely be of interested for those former Boebert employees who already alleged plenty of financial shenanigans before the freshman congresswoman even ran for office.
(Via New York Times & Raw Story)