Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) was caught using campaign donations to repay himself $400,000 — and he says he may not stop there.On May 3, Johnson repaid himself $400,000 for loans to his 2010 and 2016 campaigns. Two weeks later, the senator told Insider he had "no intention" of seeking repayment of $8.4 m...
    • dreadgoat@kbin.social
      135·
      1 year ago

      It’s legal and really a non-story. There’s plenty of shit to be angry at GOPers about without writing misleading headlines.

      Rich guy wants to run a political campaign, so he takes out loans to pay for it. At the same time, he asks for donations to support the campaign. Afterwards, he may use those donations to pay back the loans which were taken out to fund the campaign. What is the problem here? This is just how funding works.

      The story is written as though he is being deceptive, when in reality all he is saying is that he doesn’t expect the donations he receives to line up with the amount of money he took out in loans to fund the campaign. That’s fine, he’s just paying for it out of his own pocket.

      What WOULD be an issue is if these loans that he took out specifically for campaigning were misappropriated and allocated for personal use. THAT is illegal. But as of yet there is no proof of that, just whining that he’s rich enough to pull a bunch of money out the bank for a campaign (which is a problem with the system, but not really with him as an individual)