Kyrsten Sinema accused of illegally spending $700K in campaign cash

A campaign watchdog group has accused former U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of illegally spending more than $700,000 in campaign cash on personal expenses, including on luxury hotel rooms, concert tickets and fancy meals.

In its complaint with the Federal Elections Commission, Campaign Legal Center says Sinema spent the money in 2025, after she left the U.S. Senate, in violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act’s prohibition on personal use of campaign funds.

“Ms. Sinema converted over $700,000 in campaign funds to personal use during 2025, after leaving the Senate, by spending it on travel, lodging, meals, staff salaries, and other expenses that were unrelated to any campaign or political activity,” Campaign Legal Center wrote in its complaint.

Federal law bars candidates from converting campaign funds to personal use, and it allows former officeholders like Sinema a six-month wind-down period for legitimate expenses needed to close down a campaign. The complaint alleges spending continued well after that window should have closed on July 3, 2025 — through at least October — with no apparent political activity to justify it.

When Sinema left office on Jan. 3, 2025, her campaign account had $4.2 million on hand. By Jan. 31, 2026, when she filed a termination report for her campaign committee, all of that money had been spent.

“Federal campaign finance laws are clear that politicians who leave office do not have the green light to use leftover campaign funds however they want,” Saurav Ghosh, Campaign Legal Center’s director of federal campaign finance reform, said in a written statement. “Former Senator Sinema appears to have spent an exorbitant amount of campaign money on a personal spending spree during the 12 months after she left office. The FEC must investigate her use of campaign money and hold her accountable for any violations of campaign finance law.”

More than half of the alleged illegal spending was on salaries for six staffers, including several who were paid while working other jobs — either with Sinema or at organizations she founded. 

For instance, Daniel Winkler, the senator’s former senior adviser, moved with her to lobbying firm Hogan Lovells in March 2025, but collected campaign paychecks totaling $151,000 through September 2025. And Michelle Davidson, Sinema’s former deputy chief of staff, collected $85,000 in campaign pay even as she was working as the executive director of the Spark Center for Innovation in Learning at ASU — the center Sinema founded with $3 million in campaign funds.

The complaint also questions nearly $109,000 paid to Matthew Ammel for security services. A lawsuit that Ammel’s estranged wife filed accuses Sinema of seducing her married bodyguard, and the Campaign Legal Center’s complaint argues that payments made to Ammel, along with many of the security, event and travel expenses, may reflect a personal relationship rather than legitimate services.

The center also wants the FEC to look into more than $230,000 in travel expenses, ranging from Uber rides to stays at luxury hotels in London, Berlin, Jackson Hole and the Hamptons. 

And there was nearly $20,000 spent on meals, including a $1,300 dinner at Hide, a Michelin-starred restaurant in London, according to the complaint.

There were also $34,000 in expenditures for office supplies and $8,000 for Apple products that CLC says don’t serve any campaign purpose, according to the Campaign Legal Center.

“Even assuming all of the Committee’s 2025 expenses were legitimate wind-down costs — which they were not — the six-month wind-down period expired on July 3, 2025. Yet the Committee continued spending campaign funds through at least October 2025,” the complaint states.

This complaint is the latest chapter in a yearslong pattern of alleged illegal campaign spending that watchdog groups and reporters had been documenting throughout Sinema’s Senate tenure.

Just weeks before she left office, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed its own FEC complaint alleging Sinema spent more than $100,000 in campaign funds on personal travel after announcing in March 2024 that she wouldn’t seek reelection. A year earlier, a Democrat-aligned PAC called Change for Arizona 2024 filed a complaint alleging Sinema had used campaign funds dating back to 2019 to bankroll luxury hotels, private jets, limos, Michelin-starred restaurants, and international travel.

Sinema did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This story was first published by Arizona Mirror, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.