Nevada election denier and U.S. Senate candidate Jim Marchant may be in hot water with the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee months before voters can decide whether he should even have a seat in the Capitol. The Campaign Legal Center, a non-profit elections watchdog group, today submitted a letter to the Senate Ethics Committee urging an investigation into Marchant and 40 other Senate candidates who failed to file mandatory financial disclosure forms.
The Ethics in Government Act, which has been in place since 1978, requires candidates for the Senate to file financial disclosure reports with the Senate each calendar year they are a candidate. Marchant filed for his Senate candidacy on May 3, 2023, and, based on disclosure rules, was required to submit a financial disclosure report within 30 days, or up to 120 if an extension was granted.
A search of the filings database managed by the Federal Election Commission doesn’t include any such reports for Marchant, and Marchant did not respond to an email requesting comment on the matter by the time of publication.
“Whether these failures to file personal financial disclosure forms were accidental or intentional, voters across nearly two dozen states have been deprived of critical information about the financial interests of Senate candidates running to represent them,” CLC Vice President and Senior Director of Ethics Kedric Payne said. “Without this information, voters can’t know where these candidates’ financial interests and liabilities lie, and when conflicts of interest arise, they will be harder to uncover.”
In the letter, the CLC notes the Senate Ethics Committee’s track record of “referring purposeful omission of these forms to the U.S. Justice Department regardless of the electoral outcome of candidates’ campaigns.”
The penalty for failing to file a report can result in a civil fine of up to $50,000 and disciplinary action.
Marchant is running against Sam Brown and others in June’s Republican primary, pursuing the seat held by U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV). The winner of the primary will face off against Rosen in the November general election.
