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 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.
Months later, the GOP lawmaker effectively conceded that his earlier claims weren’t true — he said he’d actually loaned his campaign $20,000, not $320,000 — though it remained an open question where Ogles received the rest of the money.
It was against this backdrop that The Tennessean reported:
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.
The same report added, “Ogles’ office has not returned a request for comment.”
If the Ethics Committee follows suit, it would not be the only investigation Ogles is facing: As an Axios report noted, the Republican also “disclosed last year that the FBI seized his cellphone and personal email as part of an apparent federal investigation into his finances.”
None of this, however, stopped his constituents from re-electing Ogles to a second term in the 2024 elections.
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 and review how we arrived at this point.
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 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.
After ignoring the controversy for a brief while, Ogles’ spokesperson eventually told 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.
When WTVF returned to the subject, it uncovered additional details 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 to be a graduate of Vanderbilt’s business school.
Soon after, The Washington Post made matters worse 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.”
The same report found that Ogles said his firm represented “Fortune 500 companies,” but there wasn’t any evidence to support this, either.
In case that weren’t quite enough, Ogles used a photo of his stillborn baby to raise money for a project he referred to at the time as “Lincoln’s Place.” The Republican ended up collecting tens of thousands of dollars meant for a children’s burial garden, but by all accounts, it was never built, and as WTVF reported, “Ogles has refused to provide evidence of what he did with the money.”
The congressman’s ethics controversy, in other words, is not his only ongoing mess.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
