Aaron Schock Repays $40,000 For ‘Downton Abbey’ Office Decor

WASHINGTON (AP) — Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock repaid $40,000 from his personal checking comment for redecorations to his congressional bureau in a character of a TV uncover “Downton Abbey,” according to financial annals reviewed by The Associated Press.

Schock paid $35,000 progressing this month to a owners of a Illinois decorating organisation Euro Trash, and $5,000 some-more on Thursday, a annals showed. His central House responsibility comment had formerly paid a organisation for a services.

Schock, a rising star in a Republican Party, has been underneath inspection for regulating taxpayer income to compensate for a redecorating, as good as regulating his central and debate supports for flights on donor-owned planes and unison tickets.

The Washington Post was initial to news a bureau decorations in early February. A watchdog organisation has given requested a House ethics examination of a congressman’s spending.

Schock’s bureau pronounced Friday his payments done good on an progressing guarantee to privately shoulder a costs of a bureau renovation. Schock wrote dual checks — for $25,000 on Feb. 4 and $10,000 on Feb. 6 — to Tracy “Annie” Brahler, owners of Euro Trash. He wrote a third check for $5,000 on Thursday.

“Congressman Schock has over his joining to compensate for all a restoration costs,” his bureau pronounced Friday in a prepared statement. It pronounced that while congressional bureau costs are customarily paid from bureau responsibility accounts, “the congressman believed it suitable to compensate these costs himself.”

Schock, 33, is in his fourth tenure representing a Peoria and Springfield areas.

This week, Schock brought on house a organisation of debate financial lawyers and open family experts to residence a debate about his expenses. His financial charges — including a use of his donors’ private aircraft and unison tickets — were minute by a AP and other news organizations given news of a emblem work became public.

An AP examination this week identified during slightest a dozen flights value some-more than $40,000 on contributors’ planes given mid-2011, tracking Schock’s faith on a aircraft partly by a congressman’s cinema uploaded to his Instagram account. The AP extracted dark plcae information compared with any image; it afterwards correlated it with moody annals display airfield stopovers and losses after billed for atmosphere transport opposite Schock’s bureau and debate records.

Lawmakers can use bureau supports for private flights as prolonged as payments cover their share of a costs. But many of a flights Schock lonesome with bureau supports occurred before a House altered a manners in Jan 2013. Those progressing manners taboo lawmakers from regulating those accounts to compensate for flights on private aircraft, permitting payments usually for federally protected licence and blurb flights.

Schock formerly told a AP he travels frequently via his Peoria-area district “to stay connected with my constituents,” and that he takes correspondence with congressional appropriation manners seriously.

Schock also spent thousands some-more on tickets for concerts, automobile mileage reimbursements — among a top in Congress — and took his interns to a sold-out Katy Perry unison final June.

His bureau is still reviewing those travel and party charges.

The Post initial reported that Brahler donated her services as she flashy Schock’s Washington bureau with red runner and red walls accented with antique-looking frames and sconces suggestive of “Downton Abbey.” The renouned PBS uncover depicts a lives of elegant families and their servants in 1920s England.

Brahler refunded to a U.S. supervision $35,000 paid to her from Schock’s congressional bureau responsibility account, annals show, within days of a Post’s report.

A liberal-leaning group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, had requested an review by a Office of Congressional Ethics, an outward row that reviews ethics complaints opposite House members.

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Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/28/aaron-schock-downton-abbey_n_6775970.html?utm_hp_ref=chicago&ir=Chicago