NEW: Campaign Legal Center Files FEC Complaint Against Matt Gaetz’s Campaign Over Misreported Payments

WASHINGTON, D.C. — This week, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), over reports that the ‘Friends of Matt Gaetz’ campaign committee misreported over $1.2 million in payments to Stripe, a payment processing vendor. This is concerning because the magnitude of these payments appears to indicate that the recipients or purposes for these expenditures were possibly misreported, denying voters accurate information about how the campaign was spending its money. 

All federal campaigns and committees are required by law to file accurate and complete reports on how much money they spend, the purpose of these expenses, and the recipients of these expenditures. 

Based on Stripe’s fee structures for processing online contributions, the Gaetz campaign should not have paid more than $97,000 for Stripe to process its itemized contributions during the 2024 election cycle — yet it paid Stripe twelve times that amount, a substantial difference that strongly suggests an error in the campaign’s reporting. 

If the Gaetz campaign’s reports are accurate, one out of every six dollars it spent would have gone towards these “e-merchant fees” — which would be extraordinary. The campaign’s $1.2 million in payments to Stripe also far exceeds the amount paid to Stripe by any other political committee this election cycle. In fact, major national fundraising operations like the Harris Victory Fund and the Republican National Committee, each of which raised hundreds of millions of dollars from donors across the country, reported paying far less to Stripe than Gaetz’s campaign—which raised a little over $6 million this cycle. 

“Voters have a right to know how campaigns are spending their money,” said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “It appears that this spending by former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s campaign was not reported accurately, which would be a clear violation of the law. The FEC should immediately investigate the true nature of the $1.2 million in payments that ‘Friends of Matt Gaetz’ reported making to the vendor Stripe.” 

When candidates or committees fail to provide complete and accurate reporting on their expenditures, voters are deprived of critical information they need on how candidates are spending their campaign funds, undermining transparency and accountability. 

The FEC has previously issued major financial penalties to political committees that have failed to provide the agency with accurate and complete information on their expenditures. The FEC must investigate the true nature of the Gaetz campaign’s expenditures during the 2024 cycle and hold this campaign committee accountable for any wrongdoing.