Oops...TPM Muck discovers Cindy McCain's "personal" Trip to Asia paid by McCain Campaign

[mod mom]

Part of Cindy McCain's "Personal" Trip to Asia, Paid for on McCain Campaign's Dime

By Kate Klonick - October 2, 2008, 1:01PM
Early last week, a reader flagged a report in the online newspaper Narco News which noted an interesting FEC expense filing from the McCain campaign from June. The filing listed expenses for hotels and airline tickets in Singapore and Vietnam -- that seemed to correlate with a trip that Cindy McCain took in June to Southeast Asia. The campaign charges seemed at odds with statements made both by Cindy and the campaign at the time, which said that the trip was for "non-campaign" and "humanitarian" reasons.

The filings list $12,316 in air travel on Thai Airways International, British Airways and Air Singapore, as well as $4,886 in hotel stays for the Raffles Hotel in Singapore and the Caravelle Hotel and "Vinpers Resort" in Vietnam.

But the filings didn't specify who the expenses were for, so TPMmuckraker called the McCain camp, and like NarcoNews, received no response to inquiries on the expense filings or the trip.

Stonewalled by the campaign, we started calling hotels listed to see if Cindy or Meghan had stayed there on their trip which had been part of Cindy's ongoing work with poor children in Southeast Asia -- primarily with the charity Operation Smile.

-snip

Blackford also confirmed that following her trip to Southeast Asia, Cindy McCain did participate in a campaign function -- she and Megan attended a fundraiser for the campaign in London on June 26.

It is unclear whether this would qualify the whole of the McCain's trip to Asia as a travel expense under FEC guidelines.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/10/cindy_mccains_personal_trip_to.php

[justiceischeap]

1. Oopsie! (eom)

[crazylikafox]

2. What the heck does she do on these trips? Secret cosmetic surgery???

Just sayin.....

[mod mom]

3. It "revitalizes" her:

""This is what I do, and this is what revitalizes me, personally," Cindy McCain is quoted as saying in an AP article from June 10th. "The campaign is extremely important, of course, but this is also important to me, and so you try to balance everything."

The personal, non-campaign nature of the trip was stressed by McCain's own staff who said that the excursion was "private and not related to the political campaign," according to a June 19 report from the French news service the AFP.

[Disturbed]

4. It is a violation of the Camapign Rules but nothing will happen

with that. Why? McLiar is a Rethug & oh yeah... he was a POW.

[Barack_America]

5. That's actually a very reasonable suggestion.

Those secret plastic surgery resorts crack me up.

"What? A nose job? No. It must have been all that ocean water and relaxation that, um, cleared my sinuses out. Yeah, that's it. My sinuses..."

:eyes:

[Vinca]

6. This woman's got more money than God and she's mooching off donors? nt

[dgibby]

7. I just sent this to Rachel. Hope it gets some air time!