RSS Feed of the blog

Contributors:

Reporter William March has covered state and national politics since 1994. Email


Reporter Mike Salinero has covered Hillsborough County government since 2007. Email


TBO RNC 2012 Section
Florida Political Blogs:
Most Recent Entries
More
Monthly Archives

Rubio: GOP should release audit

Posted Sep 15, 2010 by William March

Updated Sep 15, 2010 at 02:22 PM

Marco Rubio said today he would like the Republican Party to release the internal audit of its financial meltdown, saying it would clear him of any allegation of misuse of his party credit card.

In an interview with the Tampa Tribune editorial board, Rubio also said he wouldn’t oppose the party’s releasing records of his credit card use from prior to December, 2006, which haven’t been made public, but added, “That’s a party decision.” And he denied a press report of an IRS investigation of his card use.

Asked whether the report of an IRS probe was wrong, he said, “Absolutely – I’ve never talked to anybody, been contacted by anybody, have ever provided documentation to anybody. The only people that have ever asked me questions about this are the press.”

About the audit, he said, “I want it to be released. It found what I knew it would find, and that is that there was nothing inappropriate about our usage” of the party credit card.

But Rubio added that he has only seen the parts of the audit that concerned him, which were shown to him by party Chairman John Thrasher.

Rubio had a party credit card for about three years, ending in early 2008, because of his position as state House speaker-designate, in charge of campaigning for GOP state House candidates, and then as speaker. Only the records of his card use after late 2006 have been released.

Political allies of Gov. Charlie Crist, opposing Rubio in the U.S. Senate race, have called for the earlier records to be released as well.