EXCLUSIVE: New ethics complaint targets U.S. Sen. Gallego

By Zachery Schmidt
The Center Square

A nonpartisan oversight organization filed a Senate ethics complaint on Wednesday against U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona, over a social media statement he made about President Donald Trump and campaign spending, The Center Square has learned.

The Center to Advance Security in America, in a letter to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics, asked it to investigate Gallego “due to his defamation of President Trump and recent reports that Gallego is likely abusing campaign funds for personal entertainment and family purposes.”

The Center Square reached out to Gallego’s office but did not hear back before publication time.

James Fitzpatrick, CASA’s executive director, said “there’s been a variety of concerning activity by Senator Gallego.”

He told The Center Square during an exclusive interview Tuesday that CASA thinks the freshman senator’s “defamation of President Trump on X” and “misuse of campaign funds for personal use” are “potential violations of Senate ethics rules and should lead to an investigation.”

As the letter noted, Gallego on July 6 said on X that the president “was found to have committed rape.” Fitzpatrick described this statement as “defamation.”

In 2023, a New York civil court jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, ordering him to pay her $5 million.

Trump sued ABC News for defamation after anchor George Stephanopoulos said Trump had been found liable for raping Carroll. In December 2024, before Trump took office, ABC News agreed to pay him $15 million toward his future presidential library and $1 million in legal fees.

In addition to defamation, Fitzpatrick, who authored the letter, said CASA believes Gallego’s social media post “at the very least potentially violates Senate ethics rules.”

Regarding Gallego’s campaign spending, the letter cited numerous items Gallego has spent money on, including “almost $40,000 for Super Bowl LVII tickets and brunch, almost $1,500 for Disneyland hotels and food for his family and nanny.”

Furthermore, Gallego used “over $9,000 on trips to St. Bart’s and Miami for his wife’s and her boss’s birthday, and almost $20,000 in childcare reimbursements to multiple caretakers including his mother-in-law,” the letter says.

“These are not campaign expenditures,” Fitzpatrick noted.

CASA has filed numerous Senate ethics complaints before, Fitzpatrick said, adding that he has “never seen this level of usage of campaign funds for personal services.”

According to the letter, these spending items fall “within the [Federal Election Commission’s] definition of impermissible ‘personal use’ of campaign funds.”

The letter said the Senate Ethics Manual allows for a senator to be punished “for any misconduct including conduct or activity which does not directly relate to official duties, when such conduct unfavorably reflects on the institution as a whole.”

The manual prevents senators “from converting federal campaign funds to personal use,” including “pay[ing] for admission to sporting events, concerts, theater and other forms of entertainment” unrelated to campaign events, the letter added.

To end its letter, CASA said the senator’s “blatant distortion of reality in claiming that President Trump committed rape, considering a clear jury finding that he did not, and Gallego’s ‘campaign’ expenditures are likely violations of the Senate Ethics Rules and are completely inappropriate and unacceptable conduct for a United States Senator.”

“Upholding the Senate’s ethics standards is essential to preserving public trust in our democratic institutions,” the letter said.

Last month, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics dismissed a previous set of allegations of misconduct by Gallego after an investigation. Those allegations were made by U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Florida. In a June 26 letter to Gallego, the committee said, “the complaint alleged campaign finance violations and inappropriate conduct of a sexual nature.” The committee said it found no evidence that Gallego violated federal law, Senate rules or “related standards of conduct.”

The letter was signed by U.S. Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, the committee chair; U.S. Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Delaware, the vice chair; and the other committee members.

Gallego, who previously represented Arizona in the U.S. House, started his term as a U.S. senator on Jan. 3, 2025. He succeeded U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who represented Arizona and was a Democrat until she became an independent in 2022. Sinema decided against running for reelection in 2024.