(The Center Square) — Delaware's Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long violated campaign finance laws by failing to disclose transfers of funds to herself and her husband, according to a new state elections office report.
The report, which is based on an independent investigation conducted by Pennsylvania-based Forensic Litigation Consultants, found that Hall-Long's campaign violated state law on multiple occasions from 2016 to 2023 by not disclosing nearly $300,000 in payments to her husband and campaign manager, Dana, and failed to report $266,000 in loans to her campaign.
The report's chief investigator, former FBI senior executive Jeffrey Lampinski, found that the Longs reimbursed themselves by $33,000 more than loans they gave to the campaign, among other discrepancies.
“By category, the Longs advanced $64,500 in cash to the campaign, wrote $28,545.50 in personal checks against campaign expenses, and charged $172,869.31 in campaign expenses to personal credit cards,” Lampinski writes in his report. “Their substantiated advances to the campaign total $265,914.81. They disbursed themselves $299,093.46.”
Lampinski found that Dana Long wrote four checks to himself but falsely listed them in campaign filings as being made out to someone else. The investigation uncovered at least 112 checks Long wrote to himself and one to his wife, totaling about $300,000, most of which were not reported in the campaign’s preliminary finance reports.
In an interview with investigators, Dana Long reportedly told them he was "unaware a loan reimbursement payment met the definition of an expenditure" under the state's campaign finance laws.
The state Department of Elections hired the consulting firm in January to conduct an investigation into Hall-Long’s spending after her campaign filed 13 amended finance reports with the state in response to scrutiny from news outlets.
Hall-Long, a Democrat locked in a three-way primary race for governor, denied any wrongdoing and attributed the discrepancies outlined in the report to "unintentional bookkeeping mistakes" by her campaign.
She pointed out that state election officials have announced that they don't plan to refer the report's findings to the Attorney General's office for possible prosecution.
"Voters want a governor who will champion their problems like funding strong public education, protecting reproductive freedom, increasing access to affordable healthcare, and fighting to improve the quality of life for working families," Hall-Long said in a statement. "If I am elected Governor, I will work tirelessly every single day to do just that."
In a separate email to her supporters, Hall-Long wrote that the "one thing we know about politics" is that "the leading candidate is always a target."
Hall-Long faces New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer and former state environmental secretary Collin O'Mara in the Sept. 10 Democratic primary.
Meyer posted on social media that the campaign finance investigation "proves that Bethany Hall-Long has been lying to Delawareans for nearly a decade and breaking the law and trying to cover it up."
"Bethany’s corruption is astounding: using campaign dollars to pay off personal credit cards, falsifying campaign documents, illegally taking money from the campaign, and lying about conducting an audit – it is absolutely unacceptable for a public servant to behave this way," he posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. "She must take responsibility."
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