Marco Rubio must have something to hide. There was a reason the presidential candidate wasn’t letting people see his long-secret Republican Party of Florida American Express bills. He spent too lavishly and frivolously, and used his party card for personal business. It was, Donald Trump said, a political “disaster” waiting to happen.

That was the conventional wisdom and hype in Florida political circles for years.


On Saturday, Rubio released his 2005 and 2006 statements that showed he spent only $65,000 on party business. That’s far less than other Republican leaders who succeeded him in the Florida House. And it’s just about half of the $117,000 Rubio himself charged on his party credit card after he served as Florida House speaker in 2007-08.

The release shows he did make eight personal purchases on the card — a practice for which he has been criticized by rivals — but his campaign insisted he reimbursed American Express $7,200 for them.

“Some of these charges are from more than 10 years ago, and the only people who ask about them today are the media and our political opponents,” Rubio spokesman Todd Harris said. “We are releasing them now because Marco has nothing to hide.”

That wasn’t the case in 2010 when he ran for U.S. Senate and was blindsided by Gov. Charlie Crist, whose campaign leaked the preceding two years of Rubio’s AmEx bills that totaled about $117,000. Rubio spent weeks on defense, described by Crist as a sloppy, unethical spendthrift who charged expenses like a $133 upscale barber-shop bill and $1,000 for minivan repairs on the GOP charge card.

Then as now, Rubio and his campaign say the state GOP never paid his personal expenses. In the cases where he made personal purchases, Rubio paid AmEx directly for any personal expenses, Harris said. But unlike 2010, Rubio’s staffers have spent months preparing for this day. They’ve analyzed his old bills and offer documentation, where still available, to indicate that he personally paid expenses like the $600 on auto repairs at Braman Honda or the $43.07 at Tio Liquor in Miami, which was accepted as a legitimate campaign expense by party leaders, according to state campaign-finance reports

The $715.28 for Syms “apparel accessories” in New York City on July 31, 2006? Harris said Rubio personally paid for that, too. But there’s no clear evidence, nine years later, that he immediately paid for that item.

Including that previously leaked batch of charges and the $65,000 worth of expenses Rubio disclosed Saturday, he spent a total of $182,000 over the four years he had the card from January 2005 to November 2008. From swank Las Vegas hotel rooms to Disney World conferences to pricey dinners, the charges show the perks of professional politicking as well as the pitfalls encountered by the at-times financially careless young legislator during a boom-time economy. So much special-interest money filled party coffers that Republican leaders thought little of the consequences of spending so much. Some leaders’ credit card bills went unpaid for months — often due to the carelessness of the party.

RPOF’s culture of easy money and big spending crashed along with the economy. The party’s chairman and executive director were busted in a fraud scheme related to their use of party money. Rubio’s successor as state House speaker — who charged almost as much on his credit card in two years than Rubio did in four — was criminally charged in an unrelated donor scandal, but he was acquitted by a judge. Federal investigators subpoenaed party documents, IRS investigators briefly examined Rubio’s finances and party leadership shut down RPOF-sponsored AmEx cards and temporarily ended the culture of big spending.

The newly released stack of charge-card statements provide more details about one expense that has nagged Rubio since it was first reported in 2010. At the time, Florida Republican consultant Chris Ingram reported that Rubio confided to him that he mistakenly paid for “flooring” with his Republican Party of Florida card. Rubio and his campaign refused to confirm or deny the story, saying only that he paid AmEx directly for personal expenses. Rubio in his 2012 autobiography then acknowledged that “I pulled the wrong card from my wallet to pay for pavers.”

Rubio bought the $3,765.24 in pavers from Iberia Tiles on Oct. 15, 2006, in Miami, the credit card statements show. A statement the next month shows AmEx received a payment for that exact amount, thereby proving Rubio paid it after his error, said Harris.

“No one was looking. But he caught it. And he rectified it at the time,” Harris said, calling Ingram “bitter” because the campaign didn’t hire him in 2010.

But Ingram, who denied the claim, said he won’t believe Rubio until he sees proof that the payment to AmEx came from his account.

“You can’t take that guy for his word,” Ingram said. “I wouldn’t trust him to walk my dog.”

In another case, involving a $5,000 weeklong hotel stay at the Venetian in Las Vegas, Harris points to credit card statements that, he said, show Rubio personally paid for 30 percent of the bill to reflect the fact that part of his trip was personal.

The Rubio campaign’s decision to release the 2005-06 credit card statements marks a tactical turnabout from his 2010 Senate race, when they refused to release any documents after Crist’s campaign had them delivered to a Miami Herald reporter.

Then, the campaign correctly calculated that it could afford to take its lumps over the $117,000 in charges, about $16,000 of which Rubio said he paid because they were personal expenses. In this election, Rubio’s team had the luxury of time and knowledge that he charged only $65,000 — about $7,200 for eight different items that Rubio deemed personal and said he paid for. As the campaign began analyzing his bills and bank statements, it waited a little longer to set a trap for critics to repeat speculative exaggerations about the size and scope of his 2005-06 credit card expenses.

“He is a disaster with his credit cards,” Trump said in a speech last week. “For years, I’ve been hearing his credit cards are a disaster.” The Democratic National Committee followed up with a post on Medium that asked “What is Marco Rubio hiding?” And the campaign of Rubio rival and longtime friend Jeb Bush recently gave a presentation to donors in which it called the senator “a risky bet” and accused him of, among other transgressions, “misuse of state party credit cards.”

Bush later said he hadn’t seen the presentation. The accusation from his campaign conflicts with Bush’s unflagging 2010 support for Rubio, whom he endorsed after the credit-card story was in the news.

Even beyond those seeking to hurt Rubio’s 2016 candidacy, many Florida political insiders figured that Rubio’s 2005-06 expenses would be larger than the previously released statements because he was the head of GOP election efforts that year and would have to have traveled and spent more.

Before the statements were issued, former state Rep. J.C. Planas, a Republican who served with Rubio but supports Bush, said he “would be surprised” if Rubio charged less on his AmEx while he was the head of House campaigns in 2005-06.





“I would imagine that he was out courting members, trying to get people to run for office and protecting incumbents, doing everything possible to win seats and not lose them,” Planas said, pointing out that House campaigns fared poorly under Rubio.

“If there are $400 and $500 dinners, I would see that as more positive because it would mean he’s taking members to dinner. A Cracker Barrel in Palatka makes sense because it means you’re on the road,” Planas said, adding that a small expense like “a Wendy’s in West Miami is going to be a little more troubling” because it’s in Rubio’s hometown and it’s tough to see small charges like that as political expenses.

About 47 percent of Rubio’s 2005-06 charges were expended in his home county of Miami-Dade. Roughly a quarter of his expenses went toward food, 18 percent on electronics and 16 percent to hotels.

Rubio’s use of his charge card proved an embarrassment in 2010, when the Miami Herald determined he was reimbursed years before by taxpayers for at least six flights to and from Miami and the state capital that he bought with the AmEx. Rubio blamed the problem on a miscommunication between staff and a travel agent. He paid back the party for the flight reimbursements. Under the GOP’s employee manual, credit-card holders weren’t supposed to use the RPOF card for personal expenses, but lawmakers weren’t considered employees. And it was a routine practice for legislators to ring up personal expenses that they were supposed to cover by paying AmEx directly

Rubio said in an open letter in 2010 that the card was his, not RPOF’s, because “it was in fact secured under my name, my Social Security number, and my personal credit through the Corporate Division of American Express.”

Rubio reeled from other questions about his finances in 2010. A home that he co-owned with Congressman David Rivera, then a friend, had foreclosure proceedings initiated against it. Years before, he uad failed to properly list a loan on a financial disclosure form. And he spent freely through various political committees that employed relatives.

When a CNBC debate moderator listed some of these financial issues Rubio had, he slipped the question by saying she was repeating “a litany of discredited attacks from Democrats and my political opponents, and I’m not gonna waste 60 seconds detailing them all.”

But the criticisms haven’t been “discredited,” and Rubio’s fellow Florida Republican, “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough, sharply criticized him the next day for being long on style but short on the truth. “Marco lied about his financials,” Scarborough said.

Except for his airplane flights that he reimbursed to the party, Rubio’s 2007-08 expenses were cleared by outside auditors in 2010. They were brought in by party leaders after the ouster of its chairman, who was later indicted and convicted in a fraud scheme. During the audit period, party officials released the credit card statements of some of Rubio’s designated successors, state Rep. Ray Sansom (who charged $173,000 in about two years) and state Rep. Dean Cannon (who accounted for about $200,000 in charges in a two-year period).

Rubio’s top aide when he led House majority campaigns in 2005-06, Richard Corcoran, charged about $70,000 during one period. Corcoran, who briefly became chief of staff to Rubio as House speaker, is now a state representative who’s about to become House speaker himself and therefore leads House campaigns. In the most recent financial quarter, Corcoran’s right-hand man expensed $335,000 — five times Rubio’s bills for two years.

Corcoran said those charges were legitimate — and so are Rubio’s, which are a fifth the size of Corcoran’s.





“Marco’s expenditures at House Campaigns were ordinary business and political expenses. If some of the charges on his credit card were for personal items, then that would not have been unusual,” Corcoran said.

Corcoran last week formally endorsed Bush, just days after the former governor’s campaign began raising new questions about Rubio’s time as a House leader. Corcoran said it’s a mistake to focus on the credit card spending.

“These issues are irrelevant. In the 2016 election, the American people are going to be choosing the next leader of the free world,” Corcoran said. “What people want is a leader who inspires us with a vision to once again establish America’s greatness. All of this about Marco’s credit card bills happened a decade ago. This issue is silly.”

Jesse Rifkin contributed to this report.

