Gubernatorial candidate and current lieutenant governor Bethany Hall-Long’s counsel sent a letter to the Department of Elections Wednesday, arguing a report that found her to have broken several campaign finance laws “contains material inaccuracies and draws inferences based on speculation.”
Neil Reiff – Hall-Long’s lawyer – says the report has permanently damaged the Long’s reputation, and the campaign “was not provided a chance to respond to or provide clarification regarding the report prior to its release.”
The investigation was commissioned by the Department of Elections and carried out by former FBI senior executive Jeffrey Lampinski. Lampinski found that the Long family was reimbursed over $33,000 more than could be substantiated as campaign expenditures.
He also found that close to $300,000 in campaign expenditures was paid out to the Long family, but 109 of 113 checks written were never reported by her campaign committee in its original campaign finance reports – the remaining four checks were reported as expenditures by the committee but were misrepresented as issued to a payee other than Hall-Long’s husband and former campaign treasurer Dana Long.
In Reiff’s letter to the Department of Elections, he says the Hall-Long family being reimbursed $33,000 more than the report could substantiate as campaign expenditures is “inaccurate.”
“We are confident that over the period of 2016-2023, the Longs contributed more to the Campaign than was reimbursed for legitimate campaign-related expenses paid using their personal funds and have forgiven the balance.”
The letter says the total in “unsubstantiated” expenditures amount to more than $90,000, arguing Hall-Long loaned the campaign more than three times what the report found was over-imbursed to the Longs.
The letter goes on to say that many of the expenses go back to 2016, and under Delaware law, campaign receipts are only required to be kept for three years. Therefore, Reiff says “the lack of individual receipts for each reported expenditure is not a surprise.”
Bethany Hall-Long told Delaware Public Media in an interview last week that while she doesn’t want to “say for sure,” she has reason to believe some of her “opponents and complainers” asked for the investigation.
Excerpt of DPM’s Candidate Conversation with Bethany Hall-Long addressing Hall-Long’s campaign finance issues
The Department of Elections did not respond to a request for comment to confirm this assertion.
“I really don’t want other [candidates] having this experience – I want them to feel open and transparent. So optimistically thinking, as the next governor, I will be working in a constructive way with our department of campaign finance and elections to reform this system, to make things easier on the electronic system, to make better trainings, so that nobody has this experience in the future,” Hall-Long said.
Hall-Long says while she does plan to make further amendments to her campaign finance reporting, as requested by Elections Commissioner Anthony Albence in lieu of legal action, she does not know if those amendments will be made before the Sept. 10, 2024, primary election.
In September 2023, Hall-Long paused campaign fundraising to examine reporting issues with past campaign finance reports and announced certified public accounting firm Summit CPA would be handling the audit.
In October, the campaign announced that Summit CPA found reporting errors, but “no wrongdoing or violations” occurred. In November, the campaign said they amended the finance reports to “fully convey the results of an internal audit,” which found a misreporting of over $300,000 in personal loans made to the campaign between 2016 to 2022.
Hall-Long’s campaign never released the audit and questions have now arisen over if an audit took place, or if Summit CPA conducted a simple financial review.
In documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, a September 2023 letter sent from Summit CPA to Hall-Long’s campaign reads: “We will not audit or otherwise verify the data you submit to us, although we may ask you to clarify certain information.”
The letter reads Summit CPA’s services will include examining the records, bank statements, credit card statements and election reports, reconcile the bank account and deliver reports detailing transactions and variations.
When Delaware Public Media asked Hall-Long why the campaign initially called the financial review an audit, Hall-Long said, “Press makes statements all the time that are misunderstood.”
When asked if it’s fair to say the review was not an audit, but simply a method of reconciling the numbers, Hall-Long responded, “It was an internal review where we had the reconciliation and that we were determined that the campaign was not owed money by anyone.”
Delaware Public Media also asked for Hall-Long’s thoughts on Democratic lawmakers who have publicly raised concerns over her campaign finance discrepancies, including State Rep. Sophie Phillips (D-Bear), State Rep. Nnamdi Chukwuocha (D-Wilmington), State Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton (D-Newark) and State Sen. Laura Sturgeon (D-Brandywine)
“Here’s what I can say, point blank. You mentioned four names here; I have on the other side 40 some other people who feel very different,” she said.
When asked if Hall-Long had reached out to any of the lawmakers who have publicly expressed reservations, she said, “I have reached out, and I haven’t gotten return calls, but that’s okay.”
Phillips, who has publicly called for Hall-Long to end her bid for governor, said she has received no communication from Hall-Long or her team, and other lawmakers who raised concerns about Hall-Long have expressed similar sentiments.
In February, Hall-Long told Delaware Public Media her campaign was “moving forward” from its campaign finance reporting issue, and although Summit CPA did not reach the same conclusions as the Lampinski report, Hall-Long argues that’s not uncommon.
“I internally did a review – it was a simple review of how much we put on my credit cards and how much I expended. Eight years of research later, under an investigation, is different. I dare say, if you were to pull in any other statewide elected candidate, whether in Delaware or anywhere, they would find issues every time you looked at it,” she said.
“So for me to hypothesize on some outcome of a study– indifferent. The one thing you got in me is integrity. You can’t get any more transparent than a person stopping and saying, ‘Hey, I have an issue. Let’s fix it,’ and I was linearly focused on my credit card expense and what we had paid on legitimate, legitimate expenses. And it’s just unfortunate that that report does have inaccuracies and is not accurate.”
Reiff’s letter to the Department of Elections addresses a number of inconsistencies the Lampinski report found, including providing receipts that the campaign believes substantiates thousands of expenditures that Lampinski found to be unsubstantiated.
Hall-Long’s campaign provided documentation for just over $16,000 of expenditures and says that number does not include “dozens of other expenditures deemed ‘unsubstantiated’ in the Report from prior years that were either ignored or overlooked when reviewing all the source documents the Committee provided.”
The letter also addressed a post-it note found during the investigation that said, “Need to create 2021 & 2022 receipts!”
Reiff says the investigation required the creation of physical files for each year 2016 through 2023, and argues the post-it note was a reminder that the files for 2021 and 2022 needed receipts.
“The reference to the post-note in the Lampinski reports appears intended to imply that receipts were created out of thin air despite the lack of any evidence to support such a suggestion,” the letter reads.
Reiff wrote that Lampinski was “harassing” Dana Long during his interview on his campaign finance reporting, and Reiff repeatedly questioned Lampinski’s motive and bias throughout the letter.
At the end of the letter, Reiff requested a response from Elections Commissioner Anthony Albence to address “the deep concerns raised in this letter.”
Hall-Long is slated to face New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer and former state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control Secretary Collin O’Mara in the gubernatorial Democratic primary in September.
Last month, Meyer called for a federal investigation into Hall-Long’s campaign finances.
