Whoa -- it's hard to overstate how bad the audit findings Josh cited below are for the poor, beleaguered NRCC, which just lost Denny Hastert's old seat in a special election this week, too. I guess it must have to do with the suspicious way in which Eliot Spitzer structured his money transfers, but you just have to wonder, how is it possible that a ten-thousand-dollar Spitzer transfer to a prostitution ring tripped up authorities while the NRCC's treasurer stole one million dollars and nobody noticed anything?
The Post story Josh linked to notes this fact:
However, [the auditor] said that the year-end report filed with the Federal Election Commission in 2006 overstated the NRCC's actual cash on hand by $990,000.
What the story doesn't say is that the NRCC's stated cash on hand was only $1,401,618 -- meaning that if the discrepancy represents what the treasurer stole, which it likely does, then he simply stole most of the NRCC's money. Kind of makes you think of a high school election in which the candidate's buddy makes off with the cash box, except it's not a high school candidate, it's a national party.
--Eve Fairbanks