Report identifies 109 unreported checks made to Bethany Hall-Long’s spouse and treasurer Dana Long totalling nearly $300,000 with $30,000 owed back to the campaign
Today, Citizens for a New Delaware Way is calling on Lt. Governor Bethany Hall-Long to resign from her role based on the deceitful use of campaign donations for personal benefit and the careless reporting of campaign funds to her family. In a recently revealed report, Jeffrey A. Lampinski, a Principal and Certified Fraud Examiner at Forensic Litigation Consultants, LLC, with 25 years of experience in the FBI, found the “...Committee’s account of expenditures in its public campaign finance reporting incomplete, inconsistent, and often inaccurate, leading to an unreliable picture of its financial affairs.”
The report detailed the Hall-Long Campaign blatantly ignoring the law to use her elected office for personal gain. The findings showed that the Hall-Longs owe the campaign more than $30,000 and consistently used personal credit cards to garner flight, hotel and travel points although the campaign could cover these expenses with checks.
The investigation also noted that Dana Long had never read the Delaware Elections Code through the eight years of investigation into his work as campaign treasurer. The Hall-Long campaign issued checks to Dana Long but publicly reported them as written to someone else. During the investigation, when questioned, Long did not answer why a $20,000 check was reported falsely to Buying Time LLC when in fact the payee was Dana Long. Between 2016 and 2023, 109 checks totalling nearly $300,000 constituted a reportable “expenditure” of the campaign but were never reported by the Committee in campaign finance reports.
Keandra McDole, a social justice activist who has called for equitable treatment and accountability throughout Delaware’s elected leaders stated:
“There couldn’t be a more clear example of the double standard that exists in Delaware for white, wealthy leaders versus Delaware residents of color. A local Black Councilwoman was served an ethics violation over a $600 charge for a community event while our Lt. Governor spends eight years evading basic campaign reporting for hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks made to her husband but she will not even receive a fine. If the Hall-Long team can’t manage their own checkbook, how will they manage the State’s budget?
“There is no excuse for the blind eye that the Carney administration is turning away from Bethany Hall-Long’s use of campaign donations for personal gain, and it's time for her to resign from office and apologize to the donors and the voters of Delaware. We need honest leadership that will work for the people not take from the people. Even though the Carney administration will let her get away with it, the people of Delaware cannot.”
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240726383175/en/
Contacts
Press: press@citizenspac2024.com
