Rep. Duncan Hunter’s brazen attempt to throw his spouse under the bus in particular has more than half a dozen Hill Republican lawmakers and aides shaking their heads. | Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images Congress 'How do you stay married to a guy who does that?' Hill Republicans are appalled by Rep. Duncan Hunter, who is facing indictment, blaming his wife.

House Republicans are whispering one word over and over again to describe embattled Rep. Duncan Hunter: Shameless.

The California Republican, indicted this week for using $250,000 in campaign funds to enrich himself and his family, is blaming everyone but himself for his current legal predicament: Prosecutors are “biased” against him because he was an original supporter of then-candidate Donald Trump. The media is just trying to make him look a fool.


And his wife? Well, this whole thing is really her fault.

“She handled my finances throughout my entire military career, and that continued on when I got to Congress,” Hunter told Fox News host Martha MacCallum late Thursday, referring to his spouse Margaret, who was also indicted by the FBI Wednesday: "She was also the campaign manager so whatever she did, that’ll be looked at too, I’m sure, but I didn’t do it.”

Hunter’s brazen attempt to throw his spouse under the bus in particular has more than half a dozen Hill Republican lawmakers and aides shaking their heads. All requested anonymity to speak freely about a House colleague. Asked about the matter, one of his friends in Congress simply replied, exasperated, “I can’t.”

“Ridiculous,” said one California Republican Hill aide. “If you read the indictment, clearly it was both of them… Like, how do you stay married to a guy who does that?”

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A senior House Republican predicted the two would be divorcing soon: “You can’t blame your wife and stay married to your wife."

Another House Republican added: "“He’s trying to save himself… and I don’t believe he didn’t know about it.”

At the very least, Hunter’s attacks on his wife have given his Democratic challenger ample fodder to call him a coward. Congress-hopeful Ammar Campa-Najjar said Hunter is refusing to take responsibility and “shifting the blame to everybody and dragging everybody with him.”

“Taking it out on his campaign manager, who happens to be his wife, it’s just another example of that toxic masculinity, that corruption, that infallibility he has about himself that has blinded him and made him unfit to serve,” Campa-Najjar said. “It’s sad… but the buck stops with the boss.”

Blaming his wife is but one defense tactic Hunter appears to be employing. He’s also called the entire probe into his campaign finances a political “witch hunt” against him.

“This is pure politics,” he said on Fox News. “My prosecutor and the acting U.S. attorney that issued the court orders to search my house and my office, they had just attended a Hillary Clinton fundraiser!”

He also accused prosecutors of altering his text messages to set him up: “They’ve edited some of these text messages to make them look different than they are,” he said.

The strategy is also a favorite of Hunter’s political ally, Trump, who has repeatedly attacked special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation as an attempt to discredit his presidency.

But while Trump has at times been successful in turning some Republican voters against Mueller and the Justice Department, it’s unclear that the same tactics will help Hunter. Trump’s battle is mostly being fought on public and political grounds — sitting presidents cannot be indicted, after all. But Hunter is facing serious jail time. And winning over Republican voters over won’t necessarily protect him in a courtroom.

But it’s Hunter choice to go after the mother of his children that has raised some eyebrows. The two, notably, did not show up to court together when they entered not guilty pleas, arriving instead in separate cars — even as their legal cases are linked.

Sources familiar with their relationship say they’re had a rocky marriage for a while because of the campaign finance matter as well as allegations of infidelity. Prosecutors asked witnesses about several women believed to have had relationships with Hunter, POLITICO reported earlier this year, including one that worked in his office.

Hunter’s deflection to his wife is not altogether surprising. When first pressed Hunter on alleged misuse of campaign funds back in February, he suggested it was his wife’s fault as well. She had the campaign credit card, he said, and if you look at the transactions in question, they occurred in California when he was in Washington, he argued at the time.

Attempts to reach Margaret Hunter in San Diego Friday were unsuccessful. When a reporter showed up to their California home to try to speak with Margaret, Hunter’s father, former Rep. Duncan Hunter Senior, would not allow POLITICO to see her or ask if she wanted to comment.

Margaret Hunter and the couple’s children have been living in Hunter, Sr.’s home ever since the younger Hunter sold his house to pay back $60,000 in misused campaign funds. The couple has been struggling financially for years.

To be sure, many of the transactions laid out in the indictment appeared to come from Margaret Hunter, including thousands spent on every-day household items and to pay for airplane tickets for her family members, for example.

But a quick glance at the FBI’s indictment of Hunter shows that he, according to prosecutors, was allegedly just as liberal with the campaign credit card as his wife was. Hunter took multiple unnamed individuals he had a “personal” relationship with, on long weekend trips and treated his friends to fancy parties and long nights of drinking on the campaign account.

For example, he took one person, referred to as “individual 14,” on a ski trip in Lake Tahoe and a long weekend to Virginia Beach, expensing parts of their trip. He also paid for "a personal stay at the Liaison Capitol Hill hotel” with the individual.

At one point, when the campaign staff tried to warn Hunter about his wife’s misuse of the card, or that certain personal outings were not appropriate to expense, Hunter accused them of being disloyal, according to the indictment.

Pressed on one of these transactions on FOX News, Hunter said he didn’t recall purchasing Hawaii shorts at golf store and mislabeling it in FEC reports as golf ball donations for Wounded Warriors, as prosecutors alleged in the indictment.

“I don’t remember that, but I would never do that,” Hunter said. “I’ve never done that.”

Even if Hunter’s wife was responsible for all the transactions, Hunter would still have legal exposure. As the candidate, he was responsible for signing off on the reports.

Even his colleagues are skeptical of his claims of innocence.

“Every month you get a credit card statement, and at some point, liability goes beyond her because they should have cancelled her credit card when they saw things happen,” said one senior House Republican. "So even if she was the one who made all the charges, at some point, there are other problems, right?”

The person added: “It was flagrant… Anyone can make a mistake, but when you get warned repeatedly [and keep doing it], that’s not an ‘innocent mistake’ anymore.”