Politics

‘Never Trump’ Candidate Unable To Pay Off Massive Campaign Debt

Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
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Evan McMullin, the former CIA officer who ran for president last year, still owes $670,000 to campaign vendors, a staggering sum for someone who received just over 730,000 votes in November.

With around $10,000 cash on hand, the McMullin campaign’s vendors have little hope of being paid.

“From what I know, they do not have any capability or plans to pay all the vendors they still owe money,” Tanner Leatham, the owner of Gathering Inc., a Utah based consulting firm, told The Salt Lake Tribune.

“They have told me they cannot pay us what they owe,” he added.

The $670,000 is owed to seven different companies, the campaign’s latest Federal Election Commission filing shows. Gathering Inc. is owed just over $10,000. A Florida-based law firm is owed more than $500,000.

As the Tribune notes, a failure on McMullin’s part to settle his debts could hamper any future political hopes. McMullin, who ran as an anti-Trump candidate and was backed by Republican strategist Rick Wilson and neoconservative publisher Bill Kristol, is reportedly considering running for a House seat in Utah or to replace Sen. Orrin Hatch.

McMullin’s campaign manager says an effort is being made to pay the vendors.

“Responding to a unique moment, we ran a campaign on a short time frame and without traditional party support,” Joel Searby told The Tribune in a statement.

“We’re proud of what we did, running a lean operation and relying on mainly small individual donors, but ultimately fell short of fundraising goals. We are working hard to do what we can within the law to retire as much debt as possible.”

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