Gaetz campaign's reports of vast spending on fees are scrutinized

Former Congressman Matt Gaetz’s campaign committee has reported spending millions of dollars on Stripe Inc.’s payment-processing services in recent years, though it now says that those funds ultimately went somewhere else — and campaign-finance watchers say that’s a problem.

During the 2024 election cycle, Gaetz’s principal campaign committee, Friends of Matt Gaetz, said in Federal Election Commission filings that it had paid a total of $1.2 million in “e-merchant fees” to Stripe, a San Francisco-based financial-services company. The sum is equivalent to about 19% of all contributions the campaign took in during the period, the filings show.

Such outlays far exceed election-season norms. A Bloomberg News analysis of FEC filings by candidates for federal office this year found that campaign committees typically reported spending between 1% and 4% of their contributions on payment processing. Most campaigns report payment-processing expenses separately from other vendor costs.

Gaetz was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump last week to serve as attorney general but withdrew from consideration on Thursday. He has faced scrutiny over allegations of sexual misconduct. The Florida Republican has denied any wrongdoing.

Gaetz has long disclosed comparatively high spending on financial-processing fees, FEC filings show. Over the past three election cycles, his campaigns have reported paying Stripe $2.5 million — or 13% of their fundraising haul over that time. That is a greater share of donations than any other candidate or committee has reported paying Stripe since 2020. Gaetz was first elected to Congress in 2016.

A Friends of Matt Gaetz campaign official, who asked not to be named discussing internal campaign operations, said in response to questions from Bloomberg News this week that the disclosures aren’t an accurate reflection of where its money has flowed. The official said not all the money attributed to Stripe was for their payments service, explaining that the rest of the funds were passed on to other vendors.

The official said that the campaign’s FEC reports don’t disclose where the money ultimately was sent because the software the campaign uses to manage its funds doesn’t break out what was paid to Stripe and what was sent to others. The campaign doesn’t have a detailed accounting of how the money was disbursed, the official said.

FEC rules require campaigns to make specific disclosures about how they spend their money, and some election-finance experts said that the Gaetz campaign’s disclosures fell short. This week, the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan campaign-finance advocacy group, filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that the campaign appears to have misreported millions in spending, raising questions about where the funds ultimately were sent.

Saurav Ghosh, Campaign Legal Center’s director of federal campaign finance reform, said the reported Stripe expenses are “inexplicably high” and mask how the funds were used, echoing the allegations in his organization’s complaint.

“Someone needs to get to the bottom of where this money went, who received it, and what it was for,” Ghosh said.

The Friends of Matt Gaetz official said the campaign followed FEC regulations and its reporting is in good standing with regard to federal election law. An FEC spokesman said the commission doesn’t comment on specific candidates and that its enforcement process is confidential by law. A Stripe spokesman declined to comment on specific customers.

Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan advocacy organization, has lodged FEC complaints against both Democratic and Republican candidates, and it has been critical of Trump. In 2017, it filed a complaint alleging that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign committee and the Democratic National Committee failed to accurately disclose the purpose and recipients of payments for research related to the Trump-Russia dossier. The groups ultimately agreed to pay $113,000 in fines to settle an FEC investigation of the claims.

“Campaign Legal Center is a group of left-wing hacks,” Alex Pfeiffer, a Trump transition spokesman, said on Wednesday. “This will be dismissed like much of their baseless complaints.”

When a credit card is used for a transaction, including for political donations, it can generate a small processing fee to cover costs. For well-funded campaigns, those costs can add up. During the 2020 campaign, for instance, Trump’s Make America Great Again Committee reported paying Stripe over $5.1 million in fees, according to FEC filings. However, those fees accounted for less than 1% of the nearly $900 million raised by Trump’s campaign over the four-year period.

Bloomberg’s initial analysis of the FEC filings found that the Gaetz campaign committee’s reported payments to Stripe were many times what it was likely to have owed the company for its services. According to its website, Stripe typically charges 2.9% of the donation plus 30 cents per transaction. Stripe handles more than $1 trillion in transactions a year.

The Gaetz campaign reported larger total Stripe fees this cycle than political candidates or groups that raised much more money for national races. The Republican National Committee, for instance, raised $168 million, many multiples of Gaetz’s total war chest, and reported $262,436 in Stripe fees, roughly one-fifth of what Friends of Matt Gaetz reported paying Stripe.

Failing to provide complete, accurate descriptions of campaign expenditures can result in six-figure penalties, according to Campaign Legal Center’s complaint. Anyone can file a complaint with the FEC if they believe a violation of federal election campaign laws has occurred.

Complaints are reviewed by the FEC’s Office of General Counsel, which can dismiss them or recommend a formal investigation, which needs approval from a majority of FEC commissioners. Since the start of 2020, 128 of 739 FEC cases that were closed have ended in a settlement, resulting in civil penalties totaling $4.6 million.

There has been debate in Washington about how deep campaigns should have to go in reporting how their money was spent. In 2021, the FEC sought public comment on a proposed rule that demanded more detailed disclosure about sub-vendors who receive campaign cash. Republican officials including Allen Dickerson, a Trump-appointed FEC commissioner, have expressed concerns about the FEC’s authority to mandate such disclosures. The rule was never voted on and appears unlikely to be adopted in the near-term.

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(With assistance from Emily Mason.)