July 16, 2021 12:17 PM UTC

Grifters Gonna Grift: Lauren Boebert's Slush Fund

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• by: Colorado Pols

Here’s an interesting note in a Colorado Sun story about fundraising numbers from Q2 involving Congressperson Lauren “Q*Bert” Boebert (R-ifle):

Boebert also made four payments through her campaign account to Venmo totaling $6,650, each one described as a “personal expense of Lauren Boebert billed to campaign account in error.” The campaign made two payments on May 3 for $2,000 and $1,325, and two payments in the same amounts on June 3. All four state the “expense has been reimbursed,” but her report doesn’t list the reimbursements.

Need a little extra walking around money? Just Venmo campaign donations straight into your pocket!

We’re long past the point where we might suggest that this activity is “suspicious.” As we first noted back in December 2020, Boebert appears to use her official campaign account as her own personal checking account, inventing implausible reimbursement amounts so that she can pay off non-campaign related debts (over a period of just 9 months last year, Boebert claimed to have driven enough miles to have traveled one and a half times around the Earth).

Siphoning money from your campaign account into your own pockets is not legal, of course, but Boebert is no doubt counting on the fact that it’s a hard transgression to prove (though it does happen from time to time, as former California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter can attest).

The more immediate repercussions for this sort of shameless grifting can come at the ballot box, though in this case the type of supporters that Boebert attracts are probably more apt to be amused by how she lines her own pockets with donations from others.