Congressman blames son for spending $1,300 in campaign funds on Steam games

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) says his son spent over $1,300 of campaign funds on Steam games.

What would you do if you had access to millions of dollars in campaign funds? You'd probably blow some of it on video games, right? That's what records say happened with $1,302 of the money earmarked for the campaign of Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), drawing the attention of the Federal Election Commission.

As The San Diego Tribune reports, a Hunter spokesman says the charges originally stemmed from Hunter's teenage son, who "used his father’s credit card for one game," after which "several unauthorized charges resulted after the father tried to close access to the website." That's a bit of a pat explanation considering that Steam Games were charged to Hunter's campaign account on 68 separate occasions between October 13 and December 16, with $96 spent in one instance. Managing your various payment methods on Steam can be a little difficult, but that's a long time for a parent to utterly fail at "closing access to the website."

While the FEC isn't formally investigating Hunter for the charges, his Treasurer has until May 9 to respond to a letter requesting more information about the unauthorized "personal use" of campaign funds. The expenses are marked in campaign documents as "personal expense, to be paid back," but Hunter's spokesperson said that "there won’t be any paying anything back there, pending the outcome of the fraud investigation, depending on how long that takes." We can't help but wonder if Hunter will try to make use of Steam's recently implemented refund policy, even if he can't prove any "fraud" happened on Steam's part.

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