5th District congressman admits $300K loan never happened as primary opponent pounces
STEPHEN ELLIOTT, NASHVILLE BANNER
U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles amended nearly a dozen past campaign finance reports this week, acknowledging that a reported $320,000 personal loan he made to his campaign never happened.
The Republican representative for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District has been under scrutiny for his financial reporting for months, and last year, he paid a fine to the Federal Election Commission for seemingly unrelated violations.
According to the amended reports, Ogles loaned his campaign for Congress just $20,000.
“I am a grassroots representative, and I pledged everything I own to run for the honor of representing Tennessee’s Fifth Congressional District,” Ogles said in a statement Thursday. “That $320,000 pledge comprised several documented assets, including bank and retirement accounts, which I was ready to personally risk for the chance to fight for Middle Tennessee. While we only needed to transfer $20,000, unfortunately, the full amount of my pledge was mistakenly included on my campaign’s FEC reports.”
However, the amended reports raise further questions about his campaign finances.
In addition to removing the $300,000 loan that never made its way to the campaign, Ogles’ report for the first quarter of 2024 shows notable changes in his contributions and disbursements. In the original report, filed in April, Ogles reported raising nearly $86,000 in the first three months of the year and spending more than $78,000, leaving him with almost $450,000 on hand. In the amended report for the same period, filed Wednesday, Ogles reported raising no money and spending just $1,321.90 in the first three months of the year, leaving him with less than $100,000 on hand. The Ogles campaign could not be reached for further comment.
The Campaign Legal Center, a campaign finance watchdog group that filed a formal complaint about Ogles, based some of its accusations on Ogles’ separate personal financial disclosure filings, which showed that he had few assets, income or savings, making a personal loan of any significance implausible.
Danielle Caputo, CLC’s legal counsel for ethics, told the Banner that the group is still reviewing the amended filings.
“What were all of those disbursements that were listed? And what’s going on now?” she said. “All of this is just very odd, to say the least. As of right now, we have ended up with more questions than we had at the time we filed the complaint.”
Ogles was first elected in 2022 when he emerged from a crowded Republican primary to represent the redrawn 5th District, which formerly encompassed all of Nashville and favored Democrats. Previously, he worked for the anti-tax group Americans for Prosperity and was mayor of Maury County.
In addition to his campaign finance troubles, Ogles has faced scrutiny for his response to the Covenant School shooting in his district and his flip-flopping on Republican leadership of the House. Now, Metro Councilmember Courtney Johnston is challenging him in the GOP primary, and Nashville gun control advocate Maryam Abolfazli is running for the seat as a Democrat.
“Andy Ogles lied to the federal government and got caught,” Johnston said in a statement Thursday. “Normal folks get in big trouble for lying to the feds about money, but Andy is a politician who thinks he deserves a free pass and two more years of a taxpayer salary. If Andy Ogles is willing to lie about his own money, what won’t he lie about? Voters in Middle Tennessee deserve a member of Congress they can trust.”
Editor’s Note: Sounds like an accounting problem but is it to the brink of incompetence? Probably…. and that is probably all it is. In the meantime his voting record is flawless
Defunding “Kill-switch” Mandate
This federal “kill-switch” mandate to forcibly “monitor the performance” of every driver and automatically “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation” is a violation of the fundamental right of the American people to travel freely, with a reasonable expectation of privacy. The Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution not only protect against “unreasonable searches and seizures” of persons and their possessions, but also provide that no person shall be deprived of “liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
He voted YES to defund.
National Monument Declarations
Although the Founding Fathers did not envision the federal government indefinitely “owning” 30 percent of the land area of the states as it now does, they did grant Congress, not the president, the “Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States” (Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution). As to whether the federal government has the right to ownership and control of a large percentage of the land area of the states for an indefinite period of time, here’s Founding Father Thomas Jefferson’s answer in his Kentucky Resolutions of 1798: “The several states composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self Government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”
He voted Yes which Constitutionally correct.