This story originally appeared in The Daily Beast newsletter, Pay Dirt. Sign up for that newsletter: HERE.
“Judge” Jeanine Pirro is the voice of law and order in President Donald Trump’s cable news echo chamber, making it particularly noteworthy that she has been flouting federal election rules for years.
The lawyer-turned-Fox News host mounted an ill-fated run for the U.S. Senate in 2006, when she vied for the Republican nomination to challenge then-Sen. Hillary Clinton before dropping out after just four months. But in that brief period, Pirro’s campaign managed to rack up nearly $600,000 in debts to its campaign vendors.
ADVERTISEMENT
Candidates can’t dissolve their campaign committees until all their debts are repaid, or a plan is put in place to do so. As a result, Pirro’s campaign remains active to this day. But the status of its huge campaign debts isn’t clear, because the committee stopped filing financial reports with the Federal Election Commission nearly seven years ago.
In its last FEC filing, the committee reported that it still owed about $589,000 to 20 different vendors. Its biggest outstanding debt was a $222,559.25 debt owed to the Lukens Company, a Republican fundraising firm. Other notable lenders included Mercury Public Affairs, the powerhouse Republican consulting and political affairs shop, and telemarketing firm FLS Connect.
In the fourth quarter of 2011, the last filing period for which the campaign submitted financials to the FEC, it didn’t report paying down any of its debts. But it did cut checks to two consultants: Bruce Bellmare, the campaign’s treasurer and an attorney at the law offices of Pirro’s husband, and Jeffrey Buley, who ran a political consulting firm with her husband that, in 2008, was sanctioned by New York authorities for failing to file lobbying disclosure paperwork with the state.
PAY DIRT reached out to Lukens, Mercury, FLS, and a host of other vendors who were still owed money as of that last FEC filing. We didn’t hear back from any of them. Attempts to reach Pirro were not successful, and a Fox News spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment. Bellmare, who is still listed as the campaign’s treasurer despite leaving Pirro’s husband’s law firm, also did not respond to requests for comment.
It’s impossible to know from public records whether any of the Pirro campaign’s debts were ever repaid due to its consistent lack of legally required financial filings. The FEC has sent the campaign nineteen notices, the latest just last month, requesting that it fulfill its filing requirements, to no avail.
That in itself is legally problematic. “Committees must file regularly scheduled reports until the Commission notifies them in writing that it has granted their request to terminate,” according to FEC guidance. The commission has granted no such termination notification to Pirro’s campaign committee.
“The failure to timely file a complete report may result in civil money penalties, an audit or legal enforcement action,” the FEC warned the Pirro campaign in October as part of its most recent request for financial information. The commission has yet to get a response.
UPDATE: After publication, Buley provided the following statement to The Daily Beast: “This is the political committee’s debt not Jeanine Pirro’s. In fact, a sizable amount of the debt was actually owed to Jeanine through loans that she provided the committee. FEC notices regarding this were sent to a defunct email address of the obsolete campaign. We have reached out to the FEC to resolve the issues, including termination of the committee.”
