Wasn't this chick a teabagger also?
DOVER, Del. – New campaign finance reports filed by former U.S. Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell include what appear to be previously undisclosed payments to her for travel expenses and indicate that she ended 2010 with $230,000 less cash on hand than previously reported.
In an April 15 memorandum to the Federal Election Commission, O'Donnell campaign committee lawyer Cleta Mitchell said the committee had retained FEC compliance experts who reviewed the Delaware Republican's campaign finance paperwork for the 2009-2010 election cycle.
According to Mitchell, the compliance experts discovered several "inadvertent" errors resulting from campaign software used in 2009 and early 2010.
"We believe that the reports from the 2010 election cycle for Friends of Christine O'Donnell are now reconciled to the bank account and accurately reflect the receipts and disbursements in accordance with FEC regulations," Mitchell wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
"We also went through all records of the campaign and sorted all receipts and documentation to show that the disbursements reported by the campaign were for legitimate and proper campaign purposes," Mitchell wrote.
Mitchell told the AP that the 2009 reports were filed before the campaign could afford compliance software, and that 2010 reports filed after the campaign acquired a compliance reporting software system had to be amended because of glitches in that system.
But Mitchell could not explain why the committee's amended year-end report for 2010 showed cash on hand at the close of the period of $424,130.08, when the original filing showed $654,336.15, a difference of $230,206.07.
There were no corresponding revisions of other line items on the amended year-end summary to account for the discrepancy, and Mitchell, who said she was not in her office Friday and did not have access to the documents, refused to explain the discrepancy in a subsequent e-mail.
"All your questions have been answered in that e-mail sent earlier today, ... — do NOT write that "where did the money go,'" she wrote, adding that the campaign had to "painstakingly identify and calculate fundraising costs because of the manner in which the online fundraising vendor transferred funds."
Mitchell also denied that some of the filings for 2009 were new, even though the FEC notified the O'Donnell campaign in 2009 that its July and October quarterly reports for that year had not been filed. As of Friday afternoon, those quarterly filings had not been posted on the FEC Web site, but Mitchell maintained that all required reports had previously been filed.
"There were not `missing' reports as you suggest," she wrote.
O'Donnell campaign treasurer Matt Moran did not respond to messages seeking comment.
The new filings also show that O'Donnell's campaign committee spent more than $120,000 in the first quarter of this year, a period in which the tea party favorite formed her own political action committee, worked on a book and flirted with the idea of appearing on television's "Dancing with the Stars."
The report shows that most of the first-quarter 2011 expenditures were for campaign-related expenses such as staff payments and report compliance consulting.
Meanwhile, federal authorities are continuing a criminal investigation into whether O'Donnell illegally used campaign money for personal use.
The federal investigation, reported by the AP in late December, was launched after a complaint was filed with the FEC in September by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan watchdog group.
Two former staffers alleged that O'Donnell used campaign money to pay her rent and other expenses such as meals, gas and a bowling outing. CREW filed a complaint with the FEC based on the staffers' allegations and the campaign's spending reports, and also asked the Delaware federal prosecutor to look into the matter.
O'Donnell has denied misspending any money and has said the accusations were politically motivated and stoked by disgruntled former campaign workers.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, said Friday that she had not seen O'Donnell's amended filings, but that she doubts that all the errors in previous filings could be attributed to computer software problems.
"A software glitch would really not explain how you sent a rent check out of your campaign account, a personal rent check," she said. "So that just sounds like an excuse. I think you call this a user issue."
The new filings show that the campaign committee made a $400 payment to a car-rental agency in April 2009 and a $500 payment to O'Donnell the following month for travel expenses. The AP could not find records for those payments in previous campaign finance filings, nor for more than $1,200 in utility payments in April 2009, a period in which O'Donnell was not a declared candidate for office.
An amended year-end report for 2009 also shows what appear to be previously undisclosed travel payments of $172.95 and $202.75 the campaign committee made to O'Donnell in November and December of that year.
O'Donnell said in February 2009 that she was raising money for a U.S. Senate bid, but she did not formally announce her candidacy until more than a year later, in March 2010.
She went on to shock longtime congressman and former governor Mike Castle in last year's GOP Senate primary before losing badly to Democrat Chris Coons in November.
Associated Press writer Ben Nuckols contributed to this report.