Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego is under federal investigation for suspected campaign finance violations. That’s the scoop just out from Axios’ White House correspondent Marc Caputo.
The Democrat has been on the defense since headlines surfaced in Politico last week revealing that he used campaign funds to pay for trips with his wife and kids to places like Disneyland, Miami, Chicago, the Super Bowl and more. He even tapped his PAC for $18,000 in reimbursements for childcare.
Gallego is calling it a partisan attack, but could it shadow his future political ambitions? Caputo joined The Show to talk about it.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Marc, thanks for coming on The Show.
MARC CAPUTO: Well, thanks for having me. How are you?
LAUREN GILGER: I'm good. Thank you for coming on. So what do we know about the source of this investigation?
MARC CAPUTO: Well, we only know what our sources are telling us, which is that this was an alleged whistleblower. Now, whether that's true or not and who the whistleblower is and what their true motives are, we're not clear. What we're certain of is that there is a federal investigation into Gallego over his use of campaign finance or campaign funds for allegedly personal use. I'm saying allegedly because he hasn't even been charged yet, not sure if he's going to be charged, and even if he is indicted, there has to be a trial.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, right. So Gallego is saying this investigation is a result of a weaponized DOJ basically. Tell us more about what his office is saying here.
MARC CAPUTO: Well, just that, and in fairness to the senator, there are numerous cases of lawmakers who have rung up similar expenses. Now, the degree to which his is an outlier is another matter. However, there are lawmakers who have routinely flown to various exotic locales with family, they've even paid for childcare. One of the arguments that Gallego has made is that many of these are donor trips and donor visits and they happen to take place at exotic locales.
There's that old saying or story probably apocryphal about the bank robber Willie Sutton when asked why does he rob banks, he says, "Well, that's where the money is." In this case, when Gallego says, "Well, the reason I'm going to these lovely places is donors want to go to the lovely places. They're not in these bad places. And yeah, I'm taking my family along." So we'll see how this shakes out. There's a lot of, there are a lot of unanswered questions that we'll see if they get asked, posed properly, and then answered.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, right. This is sort of one investigation closed, another opened for the senator. The Senate Ethics Committee just closed its investigation into Gallego over allegations of sexual misconduct and campaign finance violations. Tell us more about that.
MARC CAPUTO: Well, his connections to the disgraced lawmaker in California. Thank you. has saddled Gallego for quite some time.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, this is related to former Congressman Eric Swalwell, who was a good friend of Gallego's.
MARC CAPUTO: Correct. They were buddies. They famously were riding Camelback together in the Middle East and things like that, albeit they were with their spouses at the time. So this has just been sort of an ongoing problem for Gallego over time. And the fact is, is he is, he has fashioned himself as more of a national figure. He does cut a good figure for Democrats to rally around. He's a Hispanic lawmaker, he's from a swing state, he has a military background. These are a lot of boxes that a candidate wants to check if they're thinking of running for president.
And as a result, Republicans see this, they understand a target when they see one, and they're reacting accordingly. I'm not saying that the investigation into him is partisan, I'm not saying it's not, but it is a fact that he is a target of a lot of political attacks because of where he comes from and who he is.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, and it does seem as if Gallego may have big political ambitions, lots of chatter as you're getting out there about him potentially running for president in 2028. Does that seem likely to you?
MARC CAPUTO: Oh, one of the things I don't do having covered a number of presidential elections is forecast that. But I think it's beyond a doubt, and it's fair to speculate, that every small-town mayor looks in the mirror and thinks of himself like, "Well, what if I was in the White House?" There are 100 senators and they're like little kings that wander around in the Capitol. All of them certainly entertain it at one point or another.
And a guy like Gallego owing to his demographic and biographical history, certainly would look in that mirror and say, "Well, yeah, I have a better shot than most." And he's probably right. That doesn't mean he's going to do it, doesn't mean he's going to get elected, but he would be foolish not to be looking at it, and he clearly is. One of the people he's hired to help message for him is Andrew Bates, who was one of the top attack dogs in the White House for Joe Biden and on the campaign trail for the Biden campaign.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, hired for crisis communications essentially.
MARC CAPUTO: Correct. So he does have a guy who understands intimately how to run for president, how to message it, and once you're president, how to make those arguments effectively in the White House. Bates is very good at that. So that hire is not a coincidence.
LAUREN GILGER: Very interesting. Last minute here for you, Marc. He's not certainly, as you alluded to earlier, the first politician to use campaign funds in this way to have investigations or accusations about campaign finance violations. How much do voters care about stories like this and headlines like this?
MARC CAPUTO: That's a good question. There's a positive response bias that you often see from voters that do you care about corruption, politicians misusing money, they're like, "Yeah, I care." But ultimately, so many do it and they still get elected that you do wonder how serious people are about it.
There is a general sense in the public, I think it's safe to say, that a lot of politicians are corrupt. And the advantage for corrupt politicians, not saying Gallego is or he isn't, is that these investigations just start to kind of blur into like, well, everyone does it, right? It's like dispatches from Imperial Rome or from Sodom and Gomorrah or, choose your decadent city to analyze.
Leading into this interview, they were just talking about the president's wealth might have soared to$ 2.2 billion. So voters are going to see something like that, like, "Oh yeah, this guy spent $37,000 over a number of years moving his family around to these different exotic locales to do fundraisers. How much more corrupt or less corrupt is that?"
LAUREN GILGER: Right. We'll have to leave it there, but point made. Axios' White House Correspondent joining us, Marc Caputo. Thank you so much, Marc, for coming on. Appreciate your reporting here.
MARC CAPUTO: Thank you much.
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