NY Republican in critical House race spent huge sums of campaign cash on steakhouses, booze, Ubers and a foreign hostel

(CNN) — New York Rep. Anthony D’Esposito’s campaign spent tens of thousands of donor dollars at steakhouses and bars, a foreign hostel and on unaccountable payments to a close aide and friend, according to a review of federal filings.

Campaign finance experts who spoke with CNN said that the spending – and how it was reported, often lacking critical details – raised red flags that could lead to an ethics probe. One of the most vulnerable House incumbents, D’Esposito is already facing questions on that front after The New York Times reported last month that he employed both his lover and his longtime fiancée’s daughter in his district office. He has denied acting unethically.

Federal Election Commission filings from the launch of his first campaign in the spring of 2022 through the latest October quarterly filing found that the freshman Republican congressman’s campaign spent nearly $102,000 on food and beverage, including roughly $13,400 at steakhouses and approximately $7,700 at bars and $2,000 at liquor stores. On two occasions, the campaign listed recipients simply as “Steak” – without naming a restaurant, grocer or retailer.

The campaign also spent a little more than $43,000 on Ubers since August 2022. One Uber transaction from July 2024 cost a little more than $12,000.

D’Esposito campaign spokesman Matt Capp called the five-figure Uber charge “a filing error which will be corrected and does not represent an Uber invoice.”

In one eyebrow-raising section of the filings, the campaign spent nearly $600 for a hostel in Edinburgh, Scotland, on Memorial Day this year. Photos posted on the congressman’s social media account, however, show D’Esposito marching in a local parade in his South Shore district that weekend.

The D’Esposito campaign said the vacation expense “was for one House employee who travelled to that destination for both business and non-business purposes.”

“The expense was erroneously reported as a campaign expense despite the fact that the Congressman actually paid for the expense with personal funds,” Capp said. “The error is being corrected.”

Explaining the roughly $102,000 spent on food and beverages, Capp called the amount “entirely appropriate” given the campaign “has raised approximately $4 million” and such spending is “associated with raising funds and running political campaigns.”  Capp also said that because D’Esposito “maintains a year-round headquarters” the campaign incurs the cost of “feed(ing) volunteers.”

Campaigns are allowed to spend donors’ cash to pay for meals and travel for bona fide purposes, including the candidate’s duties as a federal officeholder. It is common practice for candidates to spend large sums at bars and restaurants when they are hired to host fundraisers.

But there is no clear connection between much of the D’Esposito campaign’s spending at those establishments and official campaign fundraising events.

Capp defended the spending, saying “the expenditure of funds are associated with raising funds and running political campaigns.” The campaign did not point to any specific fundraiser or donor events for the cited food and beverage expenses.

“Large expenses for restaurants and other lavish meals certainly do raise questions. At the minimum, you would expect a sitting congressperson to adequately report those. Under no circumstance is it acceptable to put as the payee on a report, ‘Steak,’” said Dan Weiner, director of the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program.

“That’s beneath what you would expect from a sitting office holder,” Weiner added, “and is at the very least, unconscionably sloppy.”

A retired New York Police Department detective, D’Esposito is best known nationally as the first House member to call for the resignation of scandal-ridden then-Rep. George Santos in 2023. Santos was expelled from Congress in December of last year and recently pled guilty to aggravated identity theft and wire fraud charges stemming from, among other things, misusing campaign funds during his 2022 midterm campaign.

In a statement at the height of that scandal, D’Esposito called Santos a “disgusting liar” and called on “the bipartisan House Ethics Committee to move quickly, and take the necessary action to rid the House of Representatives of this scourge on our government.”

Long Island Republican leaders, stung by Santos’s unraveling, positioned D’Esposito as the upstanding face of a local party whose reputation was being smeared, they argued, by a single bad actor. His district, in the New York City suburbs, is considered a lynchpin for the GOP’s hopes of maintaining their House majority. Republicans in 2022 flipped four seats in New York, sending state Democrats into a tailspin.

D’Esposito is being challenged by Democrat Laura Gillen in a rematch of their 2022 contest, which he won, flipping the seat, by fewer than 10,000 votes.

The FEC, an agency charged with enforcing campaign finance laws, keeps records of donor contributions and spending by campaigns and outside political groups. Candidates, even after entering office, are required to disclose their major fundraising sources and significant expenditures.

According to federal filings, D’Esposito’s campaign paid approximately $156,000 in unitemized credit card payments this cycle. The FEC requires all campaigns to itemize disbursements in excess of $200. Campaigns must list the name and address of the vendor, the purpose of the transaction, date the services were received and the payment amount.

D’Esposito’s spokesman said that the total number in credit card charges “relates to expenditures under $200.” That means that there was a minimum of 780 transactions under $200 spent by the campaign.

The campaign did not disclose any payments to traditional staff, instead relying on outside consultants to manage his political operation, including campaign strategy, digital spending, compliance and fundraising.

One exception was Robert Gies, D’Esposito’s chief of staff on Capitol Hill. Gies, a longtime friend of D’Esposito, was paid $5,900 for “campaign consulting” at the beginning of July 2024, according to a federal filing.

The campaign also issued a $7,100 “expense reimbursement” to Gies in February. The filing did not explain what cost or expense it was repaying.

Asked what Gies was being paid back for, Capp, the spokesman, did not offer a direct answer, saying only that the chief of staff has “been compensated for campaign consulting, outside and independent from his employment with the House of Representatives.”

Saurav Ghosh, the Campaign Legal Center’s director of federal campaign finance reform, said in a statement to CNN that while he did not know enough about D’Esposito’s filings to say whether they represented a breach of the law, “Federal candidates and officeholders all too often misuse campaign funds to pay for travel expenses, meals, and entertainment under the guise of ‘fundraising’ or ‘public engagement.’”

“Congress and the FEC need to reform the personal use prohibition,” Ghosh added, “and enforce it robustly to rein in such abuse.”

This story has been updated.

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