The Office of Congressional Conduct said Monday that Rep. Lance Gooden may have misused taxpayer money for luxury travel and “misreported or falsified campaign disbursements,” urging further review by the House Ethics Committee.
In a 36-page report released by the Ethics Committee, the OCC found that “there is substantial reason to believe that Rep. Gooden improperly sought travel-related reimbursement for non-official travel purposes,” and that Gooden and his campaign “may have knowingly misreported or falsified campaign disbursements” that had no legitimate political purpose.
The report takes issue with an alleged “pattern of extravagant expenditures” under his Members’ Representational Allowance, which is a taxpayer funded budget for lawmakers to pay for their official congressional duties — including travel and staff salaries.
The OCC initially referred the investigation to the House Ethics Committee on July 10, but the internal watchdog had not released its findings until Monday.
Trending
The four-term Texas Republican hit back in a statement shared with The Washington Sun, calling the OCC’s recommendation a “bogus referral” and a “witch hunt.”
The OCC questioned the purpose of Gooden’s stays at luxury hotels in addition to a duplicate airfare reimbursement that “seemingly covered his son’s travel costs.” The OCC also investigated alleged purchases and reimbursement of travel benefits booked though his wife’s account, a move barred by House rules.
“The frequency of brief stays at luxury hotels, often amounting to thousands of dollars per visit, raises legitimate questions as to whether such expenditures were reasonable under applicable House rules and standards,” the report says.
The OCC questioned extended car rentals as well as rideshares that appeared to be connected to campaign activity. Members of Congress can only use their federally funded budgets to pay for their official duties and are generally prohibited from using the funds to pay for campaign activities.
Gooden won reelection in Texas’ 5th Congressional District last week, besting Democrat Chelsey Hockett.
The OCC scrutinized 23 disbursements, amounting to $256,465.77, made to Chase Bank by Gooden’s campaign committee, Lance Gooden for Congress, from Jan. 1, 2025, to Feb. 11, 2026. The watchdog found discrepancies between “total credit card disbursements and the sum of their corresponding itemized entries,” by analyzing Federal Election Commission reports.
“At a minimum, these inconsistencies suggest deficient or negligent accounting practices,” the OCC wrote. “On the other hand, they raise concerns that the Campaign Committee may be misreporting financial activity to obscure potentially improper expenditures.”
In Gooden’s statement, he took aim at Omar Ashmawy, the chief counsel for the Office of Congressional Conduct, by highlighting a DUI charge he received in 2022 among other allegations.
“There’s a reason the Senate doesn’t have an OCC — because of insane, bogus referrals like this one,” Gooden said. “There is a rich irony in being investigated by disgraced OCC Director Omar Ashmawy, a man who can’t control his own conduct given his history of drunk driving and multiple abuse and assault allegations by women.”
Gooden also called for the House Administration Committee to launch an “oversight investigation into the OCC’s target selection and record of failed inquiries.”
Gooden and his “relevant staff” allegedly failed to comply with the OCC’s investigation, which means the watchdog was unable to discern whether or not the certain payments in question “were in fact a result of administrative oversight, or a more substantive irregularity.”
The congressman’s attorneys refuted the OCC’s findings about Gooden’s lack of cooperation and described the OCC’s representation of its process as “fundamentally dishonest.”
“The OCC declined to narrow its request, declined to pose specific questions, and made no effort to engage with the practical burdens and privacy concerns imposed by a demand of this magnitude on an active Member of Congress,” the attorneys wrote in a July 16 letter addressed to House Ethics Committee chair, Rep. Michael Guest (R-Mississippi), and ranking member, Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-California).
Author
