Marco Rubio haunted by allegations over Florida 'slush fund' and spending

As speaker of state House of Representatives, 2016 White House hopeful was accused of using conservative action committee dollars for private expenditure

It is an episode that Marco Rubio had hoped was long forgotten – a federal investigation and top-to-toe examination of the Florida GOP’s financial trickery at the end of the last decade that saw the state’s party chairman jailed for grand theft and money laundering and another senior Republican facing corruption charges.

Rubio, who was speaker of the Florida House of Representatives from 2007 to 2009, emerged unscathed as agents from the US attorney’s office, Internal Revenue Service, FBI and the Florida department of law enforcement examined a number of senior party figures.

But now that he is running for president, and enjoying a popularity surge that placed him top of the crowded field of Republican White House hopefuls in last week’s CNN/ORC poll, questions over Rubio’s fiscal propriety appear to be coming back to haunt his campaign. Opponents will seize on his misuse of a party-issued credit card, and separate accusations that he treated hundreds of thousands of dollars in political donations to two conservative action committees he established before he became speaker as a personal slush fund.

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