Rick Scott’s NRSC accused of violating federal law with GOP attack ads in Senate races

The campaign arm of Senate Republicans is facing a complaint that it is illegally spending money in 2022 midterm races.

The complaint was based off a bombshell New York Times report titled, "How a Record Cash Haul Vanished for Senate Republicans."

The report focused on the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), which is chaired this cycle by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL).

"Mr. Scott has taken to saying that money could be the party’s greatest impediment to taking control of the 50-50 Senate in November, and he has been acting to make up financial ground," The Times reported on Sept. 3. "Under campaign finance law, a portion of the committee’s funds are supposed to be walled off for legal expenses, and are not to be used for campaigning. Yet in July, the committee’s biggest expense — a $1 million media buy, apparently for Colorado and Washington ads — came from those restricted legal funds, according to federal records.

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Chris Hartline, a spokesperson for the NRSC and Scott, told the newspaper “If the Democrats don’t like that, tough.”

Apparently, it wasn't only Democrats who did not like the practice as the NRSC is now facing a Federal Election Commission complaint from the Campaign Legal Center.

"The spending, which appears to have been used for ads in the Senate races in Colorado and Washington State, is part of more than $3 million in media-related spending through the Republican committee’s legal fund, according to federal filings in 2021 and 2022," The Timesreported Wednesday. "Federal law stipulates that money raised for such an account, to which individual donors are allowed to give three times as much as they can to the main committee fund-raising vehicle, can be used only for 'the preparation for and the conduct of election recounts and contests and other legal proceedings.'"

Read the full report.