A MAGA congressman has been splurging thousands of donor dollars on ski trips and fine dining like someone who didn’t just spend half a decade under investigation for alleged abuse of campaign funds.
Michigan Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga’s campaign spent more than $3,000 on Montana snowmobile rentals and about $440 at fancy Puerto Rico restaurant Marmalade in February and March of this year alone, according to a new investigation by the Daily Beast’s sister Substack PunchUp. Marmalade serves only a five-course tasting menu at $155 a head, plus a $105 wine pairing.
Federal Election Commission filings also show that in April 2024, the campaign spent more than $2,500 at a high-end hotel and ski resort in Aspen, Colorado, including $1,986.15 in “travel expenses” at the Little Nell, Aspen’s only five-star, ski-in/ski-out hotel, where rooms start at $799 a night.
It also dropped roughly $600 on golf, dining, and cigars in Florida the previous Christmas.
At the time those earlier costs were racked up, Huizenga, 57, was still under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over donor money spent at holiday spots including Disney World, Utah’s Deer Valley ski resort, and Michigan’s Mackinac Island.
That probe ran from 2019 to 2024, when the committee closed it without action, citing a lack of evidence that he had “engaged in clear personal use of campaign funds.”
It nevertheless found sloppy bookkeeping had breached conduct rules and that some spending strayed into murky regulatory territory, and told him to take more care to avoid looking like he was living large on donors’ dime.
Huizenga has defended Trump’s debunked claims that the 2020 election was rigged and backed his tariff agenda. He first entered politics in the mid-1990s as a protege of former Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, now Trump’s ambassador to Canada, whose old seat Huizenga has held since 2010.
Calvin Moore, a spokesperson for Huizenga’s campaign, told PunchUp that “the House Ethics Committee already reviewed and cleared Congressman Huizenga of any wrongdoing, and we’re not going to waste time rehashing it.”
Moore added that the expenditures unearthed by PunchUp “were part of regular donor events, are thoroughly documented, transparently reported, and fully compliant with all requirements.”
