In Waning Senate Days, Kyrsten Sinema Screwed Workers and Spent Campaign Cash on Stay at French Castle [View all]

Outgoing independent Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has spent her final months in office missing votes, tanking a union-friendly National Labor Relations Board, and praising the obstructionist procedure known as the filibuster. She has also violated campaign finance law by taking pricey trips to places like Rome and California wine country, according to a Wednesday complaint lodged by the nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The group claims that since Sinema announced in March that she would not run for reelection, her campaign has spent over $100,000 on personal travel expenses. Those expenses do not appear to have any connection to campaign or official duties, making them illegal uses of her funds, CREW says. (Sinema’s office did not respond to a request for comment.)

She has successfully fought off similar charges before by claiming that the expenses were related to fundraising, but that could be a tougher sell this time around given her departure from the Senate. Noah Bookbinder, the president of CREW, said it was particularly concerning that Sinema was still trotting the globe during her lame-duck period.

“The law applies to you whether it’s your first week in office or your last,” Bookbinder said in a statement. “Spending thousands of dollars of campaign contributions on yourself is even more troubling when it comes after you’ve announced you’re no longer a candidate.” Sinema’s campaign organization has not raised any money in the last two quarters since she announced her departure from the Senate, but fundraising from past years has left her with nearly $5 million in cash on hand, as of her latest Federal Election Commission report. That has given her campaign plenty of money for a globe-spanning spending spree.

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