Minnesota Republican Senate candidate grilled over ‘strip club’ campaign spending

A former NBA player running for Senate with the support of Minnesota’s statewide Republican Party attacked the media in an interview as a reporter pressed him to answer why his Federal Election Commission (FEC) indicated that his 2022 campaign spent money at a strip club.

Royce White appeared for an interview on Friday with David Pakman on the progressive host’s nationally syndicated show and quickly resorted to lobbing jabs at both Pakman and The Daily Beast as he faced questions about his campaign expenses. The Beast reported last week that White’s failed 2022 primary campaign for the nomination to take on Rep Ilhan Omar is the target of a FEC complaint from a elections watchdog, the Campaign Legal Center, over its reported spending to the FEC.

In total, the questionable expenses flagged by the Beast and the Campaign Legal Center total in the thousands. But of particular interest was more than $1,000 spent in a single night at Gold Rush Cabaret, which describes itself as a “fully-nude strip club” on its website. Notably, Gold Rush Cabaret is located in Miami — Florida, not Minnesota.

Pakman pressed White repeatedly to explain the $1,200 expense at Gold Rush Cabaret in his interview. White initially responded that the FEC filing was an error, but pivoted quickly to claiming instead that his staffers — not him — had visited the nightclub with the sole purpose of buying food. The entirety of the $1,200 check, he asserted, was spent on the restaurant’s menu offerings.

“It was recently revealed you spent campaign donations at a strip club. Is that true?” Pakman asked.

“The Daily Beast is not a good source, that’s for one,” an irritated White said. “No, they didn’t say that I spend the funds at a strip club.”

But then the