The campaign said Rubio was frequently traveling across Florida and was raising money for the party, ABC News reports.
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“That’s Donald being Donald”, Rubio said then.
Rubio says the Republican Party “never paid a single personal expense of mine – personal expense”.
Candidates often have to weigh whether the information contained in their records is more harmful than the bad publicity that comes from speculation over what they are hiding.
But from the NY Times: “Marco Rubio’s use of party credit card reinforces a picture of messy finances”. The expenses originally surfaced during his 2010 Senate race following investigations by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times.
Trump told reporters at a news conference Tuesday that Rubio lives beyond his means and “is a disaster with his credit cards”.
Rubio was among several state GOP lawmakers given access to American Express cards through the Republican Party of Florida, which offered a way for lawmakers to get around the state’s strict ban on accepting gifts that was put into law in 2006.
There was no criminal investigation into the actions.
“He didn’t have carte blanche, (but) he had an America Express card”, he laughed.
In a report earlier this year, the Times said campaign managers for 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney flagged Rubio’s spending record while vetting him as a possible vice presidential running mate.
The risk for Rubio, who has acknowledged “a lack of bookkeeping skills”, is that the credit card may become a symbol of a larger pattern of financial challenges in his recent past, including a brush with foreclosure on a second home in 2010 over late mortgage payments and the recent liquidation of a retirement account that prompted a large tax penalty.
Grayson writes that Rubio receives close to $15,000 a month in pay, but instead of doing the job voters elected him to do, Rubio is “playing hooky” from the Senate. Every month I would go through it. If there was a personal expense, I paid it. If it was a Party expense, the Party paid it. Now I recognize in hindsight I would do it different to avoid confusion. On December 31 of that year, Rubio charged $50.69 at a Miami Citgo station.
Numerous charges disclosed Saturday are for mundane expenses, such as $6.19 at Burger King in August 2005 and countless gas station expenses.
“You can’t take that guy for his word”, Ingram said of Rubio. And the campaign of Rubio rival and longtime friend Jeb Bush recently gave a presentation to donors in which it called the senator “a risky bet” and accused him of, among other transgressions, “misuse of state party credit cards”.
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His personal charges numbered 73, amounting to $22,003.19. This week, the son of Cuban migrants told Fox News he looked forward to debating a Democrat in the general election – likely Hillary Clinton, a former first lady, USA senator and secretary of state – as “someone who grew up paycheck to paycheck”.
