Trump’s taken lately to calling Rubio’s finances a “disaster”, a reference to the fact that he used the Florida GOP’s credit card for a few of his personal expenses while he was still a state legislator.
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The campaign’s defense of Rubio’s spending practices came just days after Republican rival and billionaire Donald Trump publicly ridiculed Rubio, saying he was “a disaster with his credit cards” who “certainly lives beyond his means”. Rubio insisted then, as he does now, that he quickly paid off his personal charges. Rubio paid American Express directly for those personal charges, the campaign said in a statement.
The presidential candidate’s finances are haunting him again after he refused to answer a legitimate question about his poor bookkeeping skills at last month’s Republican debate. Questions over his AmEx card use were part of a larger controversy about excessive spending at the party that exploded in 2010 during the U.S. Senate race between Charlie Crist and Rubio.
While most of the new attention to the old issue comes because Rubio’s opponents are eager to make it a liability, the ostensible news peg was that Rubio had not yet disclosed the details of the first two years of his charges.
Those statements also happen to be the ones that Rubio has not yet made public, though he has been pressed repeatedly to do so, and has promised to release them soon.
A presentation created by Jeb Bush’s campaign also brings up Rubio’s misuse of credit cards, but the former Florida governor denied ever seeing the documentation. As he struggles to regain support for his once high-flying campaign, Republicans say the more they see him, the less they like him.
The charges were investigated in 2012 by a Florida ethics panel and Rubio’s name was cleared.
Speaking to ABC the same day, he said: “The Republican party never paid a single expense of mine – personal expense”.
The statements showed that Rubio charged just under $65,000 to the party card in the two-year period. The Florida Republican Party was responsible for paying off the cards on a monthly basis.
‘I pulled the wrong card from my wallet to pay for pavers, ‘ Rubio explained in An American Son, according to NBC. His camp said Rubio personally paid for that, too.
Among the charges on card, according to the statements are nine purchases from florists for a total of $709 over the two years and food and hotel charges, including nearly $1,800 for food or stays at Walt Disney World properties.
The Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald first reported in 2010 that the charge card was used for party expenses and sometimes personal expenses as well.
Marco Rubio, right, and Jeb Bush, argue a point during the CNBC Republican presidential debate at the University of Colorado, Wednesday, October 28, 2015, in Boulder, Colo. Mr. Rubio added of Mr. Trump: “I can’t respond to everything he says, I wouldn’t be able to run a campaign”. The Republican party of Florida covered $3,343.58 for the trip.
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“I was a senator at the time, and when he was the majority leader and incoming speaker and then, of course, speaker of the House, you start hearing, learning and then start reading about how he was abusing the American Express card that was given to him by the Republican Party of Florida”, Fasano said.
