Strip Clubs, Basketball Apps, $100k in Withdrawals: Royce White Misused Campaign Funds in Failed Congressional Run, Per Report
CBS
Just days after news that Royce White, the former NBA player-turned-right-wing conspiracy theorist, was the Minnesota Republican Party’s choice to run against Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) in November, The Daily Beast uncovered a potentially explosive find concerning White’s campaign expenses.
Back in 2022, White unsuccessfully ran for Congress, but didn’t make it past the primary. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t spend a lot of his campaign funds, much of which constituted money from donors. What The Daily Beast‘s Roger Sollenberger and Mini Racker found in his Federal Election Commission findings that year, however, did not all seem like it went towards getting White elected to anything:
At five in the morning one week after Republican Royce White lost his 2022 Minnesota congressional primary, his campaign shelled out more than $1,200 in donor funds to a vendor 1,800 miles away not typically associated with political expenses-an all-nude strip club in Miami, Florida, called “Gold Rush Cabaret.” …
The strip club payment is just the tip of this iceberg.
The Daily Beast reviewed White’s 2022 primary campaign reports and found numerous items that boggled legal experts. The unusual expenses include a total of more than $100,000 in mysterious wire transfers and checks reported as paid to the campaign; hefty tabs at spicy nightspots; getaways at posh hotels in at least seven states; thousands of dollars in limousine services; unexplained cash withdrawals; eye-popping purchases from electronics, sporting goods, clothing, and musical instrument retailers; and the DribbleUp smart basketball training app that White himself admitted might be personal use.
White told The Daily Beast: “If the FEC wants to fine us, that’s completely fine, there are much bigger scams with political campaigns.” However, campaign finance experts believe White might be in more trouble than he thinks.
“We’re not talking about small stuff,” said Brendan Fischer, a specialist in campaign finance law and deputy director of Documented. “This takes us well outside the realm of FEC fines. This looks a lot like the kind of thing that people go to jail for.”
Fischer and other experts said that several payments appear to be violations of the prohibition on personal use — a potentially criminal charge that can carry prison time.
To illustrate just how large the scale of White’s campaign spending problem is, The Daily Beast invoked the name of another recent case of a politician using campaign funds for lavish, personal uses: “White’s expenses now have campaign finance experts picking their jaws up off the floor — with some indicating that he may have outdone even [former Rep. George Santos (R-NY)].”
Santos was expelled from the House of Representatives following a federal indictment on 23 charges related to his own misuse of campaign funds and other financial schemes.
Jordan Libowitz, vice president for communications at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told The Daily Beast: “In nearly a decade of reviewing FEC disclosures, I’ve never seen a mess quite like White’s disbursements.”
