Joe Biden fined $219K By FEC
Politico reports that Vice President Biden has been fined by the FEC:
The Federal Election Commission has penalized Vice President Joe Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign $219, 000 for accepting over-the-limit contributions and a discounted flight on a jet owned by a New York hedge fund. His campaign was also charged with sloppy record keeping.
Biden’s campaign has indicated it will pay the penalty to the U.S. Treasury to resolve the campaign finance compliance issues, which were revealed in an audit report released Friday by the commission.
Elizabeth Alexander, a spokeswoman for Biden in the vice president’s office, called the FEC-ordered repayment “relatively small” and said “some repayment is commonplace after presidential campaign audits.”
Biden was subject to the audit as a condition of accepting taxpayer funds for his presidential campaign through the public financing system. In all, Biden, who dropped out of the race after coming in fifth in the Iowa caucuses and was tapped eight months later to be Barack Obama’s running mate, received $857,000 in taxpayer money for his campaign, which raised $8.2 million from individual contributions, according to the report.
It found that the campaign accepted an illegal corporate contribution in the form of a round-trip flight between New Hampshire and Iowa in June 2007 for three people (the report does not indicate whether Biden, then a Delaware senator, was among the passengers) on a private jet owned by GEH Air Transportation. Federal Aviation Administration records show that GEH is owned by the Clinton Group, a New York hedge fund controlled by George E. Hall.
