A Boise restaurant owner who received over $750,000 in Covid relief funds and “used a large portion of the funds for personal expenses like car payments, life insurance and political advertisements” in his 2020 campaign for Congress has pleaded guilty to federal charges, the Idaho Statesman reported on Friday, June 3, 2022 (read story here).
Although Nicholas Jones (photo, left), 36, received the funding legitimately for his business, he “told employees of his small business that they could continue to be paid their normal wages if they worked on his congressional campaign” and failed to report over $20,000 of wages for this work in his FEC report, according to a Department of Justice press release (here).
If it was an innocent mistake, i.e. he didn’t know he couldn’t do that, why did he hide it in his campaign reports?
Jones, who ran on a pro-business, anti-regulation platform, was crushed in the GOP primary by an incumbent with a technology background (see results here). Now he may get to familiarize himself with federal prison regulations.