Campaign finance experts expressed concern following a Fox News Digital report showing former Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker's campaign paid a defunct car wash hundreds of thousands of dollars for private jet travel.
Team Herschel, Walker's main campaign organization, paid a company named Jetts roughly $595,600 to charter private jets between March and December last year. Other Walker-linked committed paid another $270,000 to Jetts throughout the year. However, a Fox News Digital investigation previously determined that the company was registered in Georgia as Jetts Car Wash, LLC, a defunct car wash owned by a Walker campaign donor.
"The amount of money involved is eye catching. It's certainly not a small sum in the context of a campaign, even for a statewide office like Senate," Saurav Ghosh, the director of federal reform for the nonprofit group Campaign Legal Center, told Fox News Digital in an interview. "This whole notion that a campaign is spending almost $600,000 at a car wash is very, very concerning."
"When someone discloses such a large amount and it's unclear exactly what they were paying for and how they could have spent so much money — particularly given the connection between the owner of that business and the campaign itself — it certainly raises a lot of concerns about there being some very corrupt type of deal in which they were agreeing to spend the money with his business in exchange for the campaign donations."
HERSCHEL WALKER'S CURIOUS CASE OF $595K IN PRIVATE JETS AND A DONOR-OWNED CAR WASH
According to state filings, Jetts Car Wash is owned by an individual named Thomas Huff who contributed the maximum allowable amount to Walker's campaign. On Oct. 18, 2021, months before the private jet payments began, Huff and his father, mother and wife each sent maximum contributions of $2,900 for both the general and primary elections, totaling $23,200 between the relatives.
The car wash was founded in Kennesaw, Georgia, in 2015 by a separate person. Then, one year later, the business was transferred to Huff and a Powder Springs, Georgia, address confirmed to be his residential address. The Powder Springs address was the one listed by Team Herschel under payments to "Jetts," according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.
Jetts Car Wash was ultimately dissolved in October after it failed to file the required registration information with state officials. However, Walker's campaign continued paying the business hundreds of thousands of dollars for "air charter" through December.
CLIMATE ACTIVIST DEMS DROPPED MORE THAN $1.4 MILLION ON PRIVATE JETS DURING MIDTERMS
"When candidates file documents with the FEC they are subject to 18 U.S. Code § 1001. This law makes it a crime to lie to the federal government," Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor at the Stetson University College of Law, told Fox News Digital.
"If you claim that your campaign spent money on a private jet, but the money went to an entity that does not possess private jets, that’s likely a violation of this law," she continued.
In addition, another company, Aviation Development Group, is registered at Huff's address in Powder Springs. The company operates a Gulfstream IV aircraft formerly registered under a firm named JEGE, LLC, which had been owned by convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein before Huff purchased the firm and jet from Epstein in 2019.
The aircraft made frequent trips in and around Georgia throughout 2022 during the time of Team Herschel's payments to Jetts Car Wash, flight tracking data showed.
"If that's what these payments were really for, at the end of the day, I think we could all understand why he wouldn't want it to be known that he was flying around on a plane once owned by Jeffrey Epstein," Ghosh said.
"Unfortunately, that's exactly what campaign finance law prohibits — is keeping it hidden where you're getting money and how you're spending," he continued. "The basic concept of election transparency about election spending requires that campaigns specify exactly what they're spending money on and what they're getting when they purchase something."
"If that's what it was — you know, some sort of payments to a different entity owned by the same person that were actually for private jet travel that they didn't want everyone to know about because of the provenance of that jet, that that's a campaign finance violation and that's the sort of thing campaign finance laws exist to prevent."
The FEC, meanwhile, sent a letter to Team Herschel earlier this month, noting that the campaign appeared to be in violation of various laws. The letter was first reported by The Daily Beast.
The agency declined to comment.
Huff and Walker campaign treasurer Salvatore Purpura previously declined to comment.
