Seven Candidates-Turned-Trump Cabinet Members Continue Spending Campaign Funds

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Maplight

Seven current or former members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet have spent almost $450,000 in political campaign funds since being confirmed by the U.S. Senate, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The Trump Cabinet members are among more than five dozen former or retiring lawmakers who stand to gain from a lack of rules governing the use of old congressional campaign funds. A proposal being considered by the FEC would require the commission to examine old campaign funds, but it wouldn’t begin to take effect until the next decade, at earliest. Brendan Fischer, an attorney for the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, said the panel needs to move faster.

“The tens of millions of dollars remaining in campaign accounts for those officeholders retiring this year alone should provide a sense of urgency for the commission to proceed with a rulemaking,” he wrote in a May 21 letter to the panel.

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