Fundraiser Using VIGOP Name Pleads Guilty

Scott MacKenzie, the treasurer for a political action committee called VIGOP Virgin Islands Republican Party, pleaded guilty to submitting “a number of materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statements and representations” to the Federal Election Commission from 2011 to 2018. The controversy came back to the territory in 2018 when the Campaign Legal Center asked the territory’s Board of Elections and the Federal Election Commission to investigate an appearance of Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke at a VIGOP fundraiser. The center could not find any records of who made donations to whom at that fundraiser, and it appeared Zinke was raising funds during an official government visit. VIGOP later reimbursed the federal government for Zinke’s trip and no known investigation was initiated.

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