With days to go before Tuesday’s incumbent vs. incumbent Republican primary showdown in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, David McKinley is airing an ad that shows a digitally altered image of Alex Mooney in a prison jumpsuit as the narrator asserts that Mooney has “no answers for why he's potentially facing prison time.” The commercial doesn’t explain this explosive insinuation, though the Charleston Gazette-Mail article it references does.
The Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) has been probing Mooney for over a year for allegedly misusing campaign funds on personal expenses, including meals at Chick-Fil-A and Taco Bell. The OCE, however, also opened a second investigation into Mooney in February, which makes him the rare member to be the subject of two simultaneous inquiries. The panel has not publicly specified what the new inquiry concerns, and because it almost certainly won't release any sort of report until after Tuesday, voters won’t know either.
However, campaign finance attorney Brett Kappel suggested to the Gazette-Mail last month that “it appears that the OCE is concerned that Rep. Mooney may have tried to obstruct their first investigation.” If true, the story says, that could subject Mooney to the False Statements Act, a law that carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and gives McKinley the hook he needs to picture his rival in jail garb.
Co-founder of Sister District, Gaby Goldstein, joins The Downballot to discuss what Democrats in the states are doing to protect abortion rights