Republican representative Duncan Hunter is facing an inquiry from the Federal Election Commission after allegedly spending over $1,300 of campaign funds on video games from the popular digital gaming store Steam.
In a letter from the FEC to Hunter’s campaign office, around 67 separate purchases are listed to have been made to the store under the title “Steam Games” and with the note “Personal Expense – To be paid back.” The purchases date from October 2015 to December 2015, but Hunter claims that the expenses ranging from $5.00 to over $96.00 were a mistake made by his son.
“Please review the purpose of disbursement in question and provide clarification regarding its nature,” stated the letter from the FEC, enclosed with the Steam purchases made by Hunter. “If the disbursement in question does indeed constitute personal use, the committee should seek reimbursement for the appropriate amount of the personal use violation from the beneficiary… If the disbursement(s) in question was incompletely or incorrectly reported, you must also amend your original report with the clarifying information.” The commission also raised the flag of a single payment of $1,650 made to “Christian Unified Schools” in September 2015.
This is not the first controversy that has faced Rep. Duncan Hunter, who previously came under fire after vaping during a session in Congress. Hunter is a self-described “vaper” and decided to pull off the stunt during a hearing about a possible ban of e-cigarette use on airplanes.
“Yes, I vape. On occasion, I might even smoke a real cigarette,” proclaimed Hunter in a blog post last year. “There are millions of Americans like me, who are choosing e-cigarettes over their traditional counterpart. Now the Food and Drug Administration wants to force me and millions of others to revert to cigarettes through the issuance of new regulations.”
Hunter has also previously defended video games from accusations that they cause real-world violence, arguing:
“The narrative that children and young adults today stare at television and computer screens, developing lethal skills through first-person gaming experiences, disingenuously portrays video games as having a corrosive influence. The problem with this rationale is that it conveys an image that America’s youth are incapable of discerning right from wrong, which simply is not true.”
Hunter has until May 9th to respond to the FEC’s enquiry.
Charlie Nash is a frequent contributor to Breitbart Tech and former editor of the Squid Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington.
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