The presidential campaign of former Sen. John Edwards must repay the government $2.1 million it received in excess matching funds, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) said in a ruling made public late Friday.
If the campaign pays the $2,136,507 it owes, it will be left with $3,905 to its name. That’s only if they spent no money in 2012, since the last data indicated the Edwards campaign had $2,140,412 on hand at the end of 2011.
Edwards’ campaign received a total of $12,882,878 in public matching funds, but an audit found that it wasn’t entitled to much of the money, a finding the campaign disputed.
The campaign maintained that it had to incur “substantial and unanticipated expenses for its own reporting” as part of an “extensive” DOJ investigation. The cost to date, the campaign said, was $425,000 and it estimated it would incur an additional $500,000 in future costs. The FEC found those expenses didn’t count as “non winding down” costs.
The campaign told the FEC that its expenses are not related to the candidate’s criminal defense and were “related solely to the Committee’s representation.”
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