Dodd’s failed presidential campaign fixes its books

Introduction

Since the middle of March, the presidential committee of former Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., has filed 32 amended campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission, including 25 which were filed on Thursday.

Why the flurry of activity for the failed 2008 presidential contender?

When he ran for president, Dodd — who left the U.S. Senate in 2011 and became the head of the lobbying powerhouse Motion Picture Association of America — accepted taxpayer funds, meaning the FEC automatically audited the campaign.

The audit found that Dodd’s campaign, and its treasurer, Kathryn Damato, misreported its finances by hundreds of thousands of dollars, including failing to report the receipt of $514,173 in July 2008 of money from the FEC’s presidential public financing program.

Earlier this year, the FEC fined the Dodd campaign $42,000 for the violations. Dodd personally was not accused of any wrongdoing.

Bryan DeAngelis, Dodd’s former communications director, told the Center for Public Integrity that the barrage of new FEC filings stemmed from the enforcement action.

“The campaign agreed to amend its reports to conform them to the auditors’ recommendations,” he said.

“It was impossible to amend just the May 2008 Monthly Report, for example, without also amending June, July, August, and so forth, up to the present day,” DeAngelis continued. “The matter has been resolved, and this final chapter of the campaign has now come to an end.”