San Diego Union-Tribune: Hunter's campaign spent on groceries, gas
Given the unusually large number of such expenditures Hunter has already acknowledged, any spending that’s out of step with his congressional colleagues should be examined as a matter of due diligence, said Meredith McGehee, policy director for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan, nonprofit political watchdog group based in Washington D.C.
“Anytime you have someone who’s an outlier — because we know the campaign finance laws are a de facto honor system — it kind of begs the question,” McGehee said. “Particularly if you have an outlier who already has some issues. It’s not an indictment, it’s saying, ‘You should be able to explain it.’”...
Larry Noble, general counsel for the public interest group Campaign Legal Center, said Wednesday that patterns of repeated, similar mistakes are not common in campaign reports.
“If it was one mistake, let’s say paying for the (video) games, you might say, ‘OK, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one,’ but when you see a pattern, that’s harder to do,” Noble said.