Campaign Funds Often Used by Politicians to Pay for their Legal Problems

(AllGov) Those who contribute to the campaigns of politicians should know that their donations may go toward more than helping their candidate get elected to office. The money might also be used to bail the candidate out of legal troubles.

In New York state, more than 40 lawmakers were found to have collectively spent $7 million of their campaign funds on lawyers hired to deal with scandals or investigations since 2005, according to The New York Times, with $2 million spent just this year. Sheldon Silver, the former speaker of the New York Assembly, has spent $1.5 million in campaign funds to pay for lawyers in the wake of his January arrest on corruption charges.

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