Claire Heddes
01/23/25
(NOTUS) White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt revealed in amended campaign filings on Thursday that her unsuccessful 2022 congressional campaign owes more than $300,000 in unpaid debts, with Leavitt failing to disclose for years that her campaign took in hundreds of thousands of dollars in inappropriate donations and never paid the money back.
The vast majority of that debt, about $200,000, is owed as refunds to contributors who appear to have donated above the legal limits. Those excessive contributions went unreported for years — until Thursday — when Leavitt’s campaign amended every campaign filing she had ever made with the Federal Election Commission.
Congressional candidates can technically accept campaign donations exceeding contribution limits — as long as they refund the contributor or redesignate the funds within 60 days, according to federal campaign finance law.
Leavitt’s campaign committee appears to have done neither.
Her congressional campaign committee amended 17 campaign finance reports on Thursday, noting that, over the course of three years, Leavitt took in a number of excessive contributions that she failed to report and has failed to pay back, essentially stiffing her donors.
When contacted for comment, Leavitt had Axiom Strategies’ Erin Perrine — a former communications director for Ron DeSantis’ PAC — handle NOTUS’ questions.
“An FEC inquiry was prompted by one double filihttps://admin.endcitizensunited.org/wp-admin/post-new.php#edit_timestampng and the employee involved was dismissed,” Eric Brown, general counsel at Ax Capital, wrote in a statement. “These amendments were made at the FEC’s instructions following careful post-election review of the campaign’s fundraising records and involve no acts, errors, or omissions of the candidate.”
(According to Thursday’s FEC filings, Leavitt’s campaign owes Axiom Strategies $46,748. The campaign also owes Ax Capital $518.)
In response to additional questions — such as what Brown meant by “double filing,” whether the campaign had settled the debts, whether the campaign had reached a conciliation agreement with the FEC, how the campaign had missed spending an additional $200,000 for more than two years and why the money was not returned within the 60-day window — Brown wrote, “Ax Capital is working with the FEC to address outstanding issues, none of which directly involved the candidate, and the candidate is never personally responsible for the committee’s reimbursements.”
The newly disclosed excessive donations essentially triples Leavitt’s campaign debt, bringing the total to $326,370 owed to vendors and contributors. (Leavitt had previously reported $105,605 in debt in a filing at the end of September 2024.)
For example, one donor — former New Hampshire governor Craig Benson — donated $8,700 to Leavitt’s campaign ahead of the 2022 general election, according to finance records. Campaign contribution limits were $2,900 per election at the time, and the newly filed records show Leavitt’s campaign still owes him a refund, more than two years later.
The excessive donor issue isn’t exactly new for Leavitt. In 2022, campaign finance group End Citizens United made a complaint to the FEC alleging that Leavitt’s campaign and its treasurer violated federal campaign finance laws by illegally accepting contributions over the legal limits and failing to refund the donations.
In a statement to NOTUS, End Citizens United spokesperson Bawadden Sayed said Leavitt’s amended reports “clearly show that the complaint we filed with the FEC was correct.”
“She took excessive contributions, which is against the law, and is just now reporting them — two years later. She ignored this violation until it became politically inconvenient, only addressing it because she’s in the public eye and under greater scrutiny,” Sayed said.
But the new records released Thursday reveal a far more widespread pattern of accepting contributions over the legal limit, and they underscore how severely Leavitt’s campaign has violated the law requiring the committee to refund donors within 60 days. According to the records filed today, Leavitt has failed to refund the donors for years.
One longtime FEC expert and attorney — who was uninvolved in the case but asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized by their law firm to speak about it — told NOTUS the new files are likely rectifying issues surrounding the 2022 complaint, as the statement from Leavitt’s lawyer suggested. The campaign could be forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines, in addition to the more than $300,000 in debts.
“If they filed these amended reports today, that probably means that they have signed a conciliation agreement, and sometime soon, that will be released by the FEC,” the expert said.
“We’ll see what the penalty is, because there’s multiple,” the expert continued. “There’s reporting violations, and then there’s accepting illegal excessive contributions violations, there’s failing to return — multiple violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act.”
Of course, there’s another concern raised from Leavitt’s campaign debt: how she plans to repay the money.
Her campaign only has about $8,000 in cash on hand — meaning the campaign already spent the excessive contributions — and Leavitt’s personal financial disclosure from the 2022 campaign showed no assets. (In recent years, the White House press secretary has been paid approximately $180,000 in salary.)
For Leavitt to settle the debt, she could either write a check herself or she can fundraise. The White House press secretary seeking donations to settle old campaign debts may present its own set of ethical issues, however.
As End Citizens United noted in its statement to NOTUS, the situation creates a “glaring conflict of interest” for Leavitt in her role as press secretary.
“She still needs to raise money to refund these contributions, potentially opening the door for wealthy donors and corporate special interests to curry favor with her, the administration or the president,” Sayed said.
There is, of course, her new husband, Nicholas Riccio. Riccio owns a real estate company that is reportedly worth millions, and he was on the Leavitt campaign’s finance committee during her congressional bid.
Riccio is still owed $1,000 by the campaign, according to the latest filing. His company, Riccio Enterprises, is owed $1,300.