{"id":4533,"date":"2025-01-06T22:23:31","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T22:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/ethics-troubles-for-gops-andy-ogles-become-even-more-serious\/"},"modified":"2025-01-06T22:23:31","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T22:23:31","slug":"ethics-troubles-for-gops-andy-ogles-become-even-more-serious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/ethics-troubles-for-gops-andy-ogles-become-even-more-serious\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethics troubles for GOP\u2019s Andy Ogles become even more serious"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee was already one of Congress’ more controversial members when things took a torn for the worse in the fall of 2023.<\/p>\n

WTVF, the CBS affiliate in Nashville, reported<\/a> that the congressman’s finance reports showed he had made a $320,000 personal loan to his campaign. That might not have been especially problematic — candidates often make these kinds of loans — were it not for the fact that Ogles’ financial disclosures suggested he didn’t have $320,000.<\/p>\n

Months later, the GOP lawmaker effectively conceded that his earlier claims weren’t true<\/a> — he said he’d actually loaned his campaign $20,000, not $320,000 — though it remained an open question from whom Ogles received the rest of the money.<\/p>\n

It was against this backdrop that The Tennessean reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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After a preliminary review, an independent federal agency has recommended the U.S. House Ethics Committee conduct a full investigation into U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles’ campaign finances, centering on a $320,000 contribution reported by Ogles’ 2022 congressional campaign. The Office of Congressional Ethics made the recommendation [last] week. Ogles and his wife did not cooperate with the agency’s preliminary review and the office is recommending the couple be subpoenaed as part of the investigation.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/small><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/section>\n

The same report added, “Ogles’ office has not returned a request for comment.”<\/p>\n

If the Ethics Committee follows suit, it would not be the only investigation Ogles is facing: As an Axios report<\/a> noted, the Republican also “disclosed last year that the FBI seized his cellphone<\/a> and personal email as part of an apparent federal investigation into his finances.”<\/p>\n

None of this, however, stopped his constituents from re-electing Ogles to a second term in the 2024 elections.<\/p>\n

Time will tell what, if anything, comes of the ethics probe, but the larger problem for Ogles is his pattern of apparent deceptions. For those who might benefit from a refresher, let’s revisit our earlier coverage<\/a> and review how we arrived at this point.<\/p>\n

It was a couple of years ago when the congressman first faced allegations that he’d wildly inflated his résumé. WTVF uncovered quite a few instances<\/a> in which the Tennessee Republican falsely described himself as an economist, falsely boasted about his law enforcement career, and even exaggerated his work at a nonprofit organization.<\/p>\n

After ignoring the controversy for a brief while, Ogles’ spokesperson eventually told<\/a> Fox News Digital that he’d simply “condensed” his résumé “for the sake of brevity,” which was an odd response to evidence that the GOP lawmaker had made brazenly untrue claims.<\/p>\n

When WTVF returned to the subject, it uncovered additional details<\/a> that made matters a bit worse: Ogles also failed to tell the truth about his academic background — including what his degree is in — and he falsely claimed<\/a> to be a graduate of Vanderbilt’s business school.<\/p>\n

Soon after, The Washington Post made matters worse<\/a> for Ogles, noting that the Republican “exaggerated or invented” his service on various boards and claimed to have run a consulting firm that “cannot be found in Tennessee corporate records.”<\/p>\n

The same report found that Ogles said his firm represented “Fortune 500 companies,” but there wasn’t any evidence to support this, either.<\/p>\n

In case that weren’t quite enough, Ogles used a photo of his stillborn baby to raise money for a project<\/a> he referred to at the time as “Lincoln’s Place.” The Republican ended up collecting tens of thousands of dollars<\/a> meant for a children’s burial garden, but by all accounts, it was never built, and as WTVF reported<\/a>“Ogles has refused to provide evidence of what he did with the money.”<\/p>\n

The congressman’s ethics controversy, in other words, is not his only ongoing mess.<\/p>\n

This post updates our <\/em>related earlier coverage<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Steve Benen<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee was already one of Congress’ more controversial members when things took a torn for the worse in the fall of 2023. WTVF, the CBS affiliate in Nashville, reported that the congressman’s finance reports showed he had made a $320,000 personal loan to his campaign. That might not have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}