A firebrand Republican and freshman member of Congress has continued to shield his personal finances from the public eye, which could reveal conflicts of interest and indicate he is violating federal law, experts told the Washington Examiner.
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-KY), a newly-elected House GOP member and ex-Mayor of Maury County, Tennessee, has yet to file a financial disclosure form with the Office of the Clerk, according to a search of the federal database. The glaring discrepancy may mean Ogles, who has said he helped “negotiate” over $5 billion worth of investments as mayor, is skirting a law intended to show whether lawmakers have conflicts of interests in connection to their sources of wealth.
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“This is so strange,” Jordan Libowitz, spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a left-leaning ethics nonprofit group, told the Washington Examiner. “If he needs more time to fill out the form, it’s easy to get an extension.”
“This is as basic as transparency gets, everyone does it,” he added. “This doesn’t mean that Ogles is trying to hide something from his constituents, but he’s sure making it look like he is.”
Members of Congress, officers, and certain House employees are required to file annual financial disclosures with Congress, according to the Ethics in Government Act, a 1978 law approved in the wake of the Watergate scandal involving former President Richard Nixon.
Disclosures are meant to include a lawmaker’s “assets and earned income,” such as stocks, liabilities, sources of compensation exceeding $5,000 from a single source, and any agreements to receive pay. The completion of these forms are considered a basic requirement for lawmakers, who could be fined as much as $66,000 for failure to file.
The common penalty for failure to file, however, is typically $200.
“The personal financial disclosure reports by candidates for Congress are an essential source of information from which voters may judge the merits of candidates,” Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the left-wing think tank Public Citizen and a campaign finance expert, told the Washington Examiner. “These disclosures are also absolutely critical for the press, and Congress itself, to determine whether an elected lawmaker has serious conflicts of interest that reflect poorly on his or her legislative actions.”
Heidi Campbell, a Democratic Tennessee state senator who unsuccessfully ran against Ogles in the November general election, published her financial disclosure in April 2022, records show. Campbell listed her over $24,000 in government income and a $160,000 sum in 2021 she earned from Everfleet LLC, a Nashville-based private equity firm.
Ogles isn’t alone among freshman GOP members in not filing his disclosure. A form for Rep. George Santos (R-NY), who has come under fire for lying extensively about his past, has yet to appear on the House Clerk’s website.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said on Tuesday that Santos will be removed from Congress if the House Ethics Committee, which handles investigations into lawmakers, finds he violated federal law. Santos has filed contradictory campaign finance reports that have raised concerns about how he made his money through the years.
Santos also filed a report on Wednesday listing a man as his campaign treasurer named Thomas Datwyler, who has denied working for the New York’s Republican’s campaign. Datwyler’s lawyer claimed the filings were signed by the alleged treasurer without his consent.
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“Any member of Congress who failed to disclose their financial interests during the campaign, and continue to hide those interests while serving in Congress, should be rebuffed by fellow lawmakers,” said Holman.
The Ogles campaign did not respond to a request for comment, nor did a senior staffer in his congressional office.
