Bernie Moreno, a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Ohio, has been lying to his constituents not only about his background but about his plans to cash in on his time in office.
Moreno was in the national news this week after he helped to spread racist, right-wing rumors that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were abducting and eating their neighbors’ pets.
Moreno, who was born in Colombia, claimed in a post on X that Haitian immigrants were “sucking up social services” in Springfield. “We need to deport illegals, not invite them to wreak havoc on our communities,” Moreno wrote, even though the Haitian immigrants in Springfield are not undocumented and are under temporary protected status.
Those aren’t the only lies that the MAGA Republican has told on the campaign trail, however. Apparently, Moreno has also been lying about his business dealings, repeatedly claiming that he’s sold all of his companies so he can head to Washington, D.C., with no hidden agenda.
“I’ve sold all my operating businesses,” Moreno said in November, according to the Statehouse News Bureau . “I wanted to go to Washington, D.C., free of any conflicts of interest. No individual stocks, no individual bonds, no corporate holdings. I’ve made that sacrifice to run for the U.S. Senate.”
During a December appearance on the Ola Hawatmeh Show , a conservative YouTube channel, Moreno repeated his claims. “This is what I do full time every single day. I’ve sold all my operating businesses. I believe that people go to D.C., they shouldn’t have conflicts of interest. I don’t own any operating companies, don’t have any individual stocks.” The title of the episode touted Moreno, a former car dealer, as an “Entrepreneur Turned Politician.”
“I’ve sold all my business interests to do this,” Moreno said again during a Ohio Republican Senate debate in March, eliciting some applause from the audience. He added that he was “concerned about the people who made a lot of money while in Washington.”
But in April, just a few weeks after winning the Republican primary, Moreno spent $9.5 million on a plot of land in Sunbury, Ohio, according to NBC News . Around the same time, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services entered into a mortgage agreement with a company called M20 Realty LLC—one of the 20 businesses that Moreno owns, according to a recent financial disclosure statement. Moreno has signed off on $40 million worth of Mercedes-Benz financing to open up a new dealership, according to the Statehouse News Bureau .
Moreno had signed the mortgage as M20 Realty’s manager and also signed a landlord-tenant agreement between M20 Realty and M20 Motors on behalf of both companies, according to the Delaware County, Ohio, recorder. Moreno said the Sunbury project has been in the works for four years, according to NBC News. In 2022, M20 motors registered for the name Mercedes-Benz Sunbury.
Campaign spokeswoman Regan McCarthy hit back at claims that Moreno had presented his financial interests dishonestly. “The Sunbury dealership is not currently an operating company and is going to be run by Bernie’s son,” McCarthy told the Statehouse News Bureau. “This is an investment by Bernie in a business for his son, not a business for himself.”
In addition to his future plans, it seems Moreno has also been lying about his past. When he applied to open an Infiniti car dealership in Coral Gables, Florida, a document submitted claimed that he had received an MBA from the University of Michigan. Moreno had even signed the application. However, the Michigan Office of Public Affairs told the Ohio Capital Journal Monday that Moreno held only a bachelor’s degree in business.
When the campaign tried to dismiss the claim by referring to a different document with the correct information, the Journal found yet another document filed a year later with the wrong credentials. The campaign told the Journal that the third document had been “prepared by a staffer who made a mistake.”
The Journal found that the false credential popped up in several places, in fact. In 2014, it appeared in a bio for Moreno published when he joined the Cleveland Foundation board of directors. Another campaign spokeswoman told the Journal that Moreno “never told the foundation that he held an MBA. I’m not sure why they listed that, you’d have to ask them.”
A 2018 biography of Moreno from when he chaired the Cleveland State University Board of Trustees claimed that he held multiple degrees from Michigan, but he only has one. The claim that he had received an MBA also appeared on the website for a car dealership he owned in North Olmsted, Ohio. Both mentions have since been removed from those websites.
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