Florida Republican cooperating with campaign finance probe

MIAMI (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department is investigating a former Florida congresswoman accused of spending at least $50,000 in campaign money on vacations and restaurant and luxury hotel bills.

The federal department's Public Integrity Section is looking into the expenditures by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican who retired after three decades representing the Miami area in Congress. They include a 2017 trip to Walt Disney World with her children and grandchildren, rooms at a Ritz-Carlton resort and a New Year's Eve meal at a high-end seafood restaurant.

Her attorney, Jeffrey Weiner, gave a statement to WFOR-TV, which first reported the Justice investigation on Wednesday, that Ros-Lehtinen and former staff members and volunteers have been cooperating with the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department.

In a statement to the Miami Herald, the attorney added that they are turning over campaign finance and other records subpoenaed by the Justice Department.

“We ... are confident that, if bookkeeping errors were committed, they were due to negligence, and not willful or intentional misconduct by the former congresswoman or anyone on her staff, or her accountants," the news outlets quoted Weiner as saying.

Ros-Lehtinen, declined to seek reelection in 2018. A Cuban-American, she was Florida's first woman representative, and the first Hispanic woman elected to Congress. Her husband, Dexter Lehtinen, was an acting U.S. Attorney for South Florida and a law professor.

Following her retirement announcement in April 2017, she transferred more than $177,000 from her reelection campaign account to a political action committee she controlled, WFOR-TV reported. Federal law prohibits campaign funds, including those transferred to PACs, from being spent on personal...