One person who might understand the position in which U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) has found himself (resigning after weeks of media scrutiny over questionable spending) is former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.). Weiner also resigned from Congress after a scandal.
Though both scandals involve lots of social media pictures, the circumstances of their resignations are vastly different. Weiner left Congress in June 2011 amid a "sexting" scandal that featured embarrassing pictures and tweets from his Twitter account. Schock resigned after investigative journalists unearthed details alleging fraudulent billing of mileage reimbursement to his congressional office, paying for a private plane flight with taxpayer money, a questionable real estate deal with a political donor and many other potential abuses of his campaign fund.
The former congressman from New York offered his thoughts on Schock's situation in Business Insider:
1. Campaign accounts, particularly the political action committee, or PAC, are largely not about getting elected. You can pretty much justify anything as an election-related expenditure. From dry-cleaning bills to the costs of grooming and boarding your family dog. Hey, you need to have a clean suit and a handsome dog in those campaign pictures, no?
2. Dipping into official House office accounts is dumb. The biggest, clearest smoking gun in the Schock case is the way he used the permissible per-mile reimbursement of his personal car as a way of padding his pockets.
Check out the rest of the points Weiner made about Schock's situation at Reboot Illinois, including Weiner's ideas about ethics rules and the investigations that follow such scandals.
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