Amid Audit, DeLay PAC Revises FEC Filings
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Derek Willis
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, May 20, 2005; Page A06
An interim federal audit of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's (R-Tex.) principal fundraising committee has found that the group engaged in some inappropriate accounting of receipts and expenditures, prompting it to revise all campaign reports for 2001 and 2002, according to a knowledgeable government official and public records.
The group, Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), is a giant among committees established by House and Senate lawmakers to finance their own political campaigns and the campaigns of colleagues. Several thousand individual and corporate contributors have given a total of $13.2 million to ARMPAC since 1999; the committee has in turn spent millions of dollars to help DeLay and fellow Republicans win reelection.
DeLay's aides have not detailed what ARMPAC did wrong in its filings to the Federal Election Commission or explained why the group made the revisions this week, before the commission's audit is completed. A spokesman for DeLay, Dan Allen, said yesterday that he could not comment, and Donald McGahn II -- a lawyer for the National Republican Congressional Committee who Allen said is representing ARMPAC -- did not return several telephone calls.
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Jan Baran, a Republican lawyer who specializes in campaign law, said the listing of this debt evidently means that ARMPAC improperly used unregulated campaign contributions to finance certain expenses during those years and now must pay that sum back to comply with the rules.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/19/AR2005051901723.html