Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee reported lending his campaign $320,000 in 2022 before retracting it.
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The Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint against Representative Andy Ogles in January, seeking an ethics investigation into whether the congressman violated financial disclosure requirements.
The F.B.I. has seized the phone of Representative Andy Ogles, Republican of Tennessee, as it carries out an apparent investigation into his campaign finances.
The bureau served a search warrant at Mr. Ogles’s home in central Tennessee on Friday and took his phone, according to his lawyer, G. Kline Preston IV.
“There was a search warrant for a phone,” Mr. Preston said. “That was it. It was a limited search, and we cooperated with the F.B.I.”.
Mr. Preston said it was his understanding that the search was related to allegations of financial improprieties. “Hopefully this will be resolved quickly,” he added.
NewsChannel 5 in Nashville reported on the search warrant earlier on Tuesday. The Justice Department and federal prosecutors in Tennessee declined to comment.
Mr. Ogles has been under scrutiny after reporting a $320,000 loan to his campaign in April 2022. That prompted questions about whether Mr. Ogles, who also reported limited financial resources on his House financial disclosure forms, could have afforded to lend that amount. In May, Mr. Ogles, who called the reported loan a mistake, amended his campaign finance reports to remove it.
The Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group, filed a complaint against Mr. Ogles in January, seeking an ethics investigation into whether the congressman violated financial disclosure requirements.
The complaint alleged that Mr. Ogles’s financial disclosure statements did not include the assets that he purportedly used to personally loan $320,000 to his campaign committee. The complaint also said that he did not report a $700,000 line of credit that he apparently opened in September 2022, according to bank records.
“The over $1 million of financial disclosure discrepancies provide reasonable basis for O.C.E. to investigate whether Rep. Ogles complied with the Ethics in Government Act and House rules,” the complaint stated, referring to the Office of Congressional Ethics.
Mr. Ogles is one of the most conservative lawmakers in the House and a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus. He has routinely voted against government funding bills, opposed aid to help Ukraine fight off the Russian invasion, and recently introduced articles of impeachment against Vice President Kamala Harris that accused her of mishandling the southern border.
The seizure of his phone came one day after he turned back a primary challenge from Courtney Johnston, a Republican on the Metropolitan Council in Nashville.
Justice Department policy prohibits federal prosecutors and agents from choosing the timing of “any action, including investigative steps, criminal charges or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election.”
Mr. Ogles will now face Maryam Abolfazli, a Democratic activist who ran unopposed in the primary and has frequently challenged the conservative state legislature.
Luke Broadwater covers Congress with a focus on congressional investigations. More about Luke Broadwater
See more on: U.S. Politics, U.S. House of Representatives
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Source: nytimes.com