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- Kanye West’s 2020 presidential campaign did not end in success.
- The rapper and businessman received fewer than 100,000 votes.
- Now, two years later, his campaign has another problem: it says it’s the victim of fraud.
Rapper Kanye West’s presidential dreams crashed and burned in 2020 after the Grammy Award-winning artist failed to qualify for most states’ ballots and earned just north of 66,000 votes.
Two years later, West’s campaign committee — still technically in existence — has hit a different snag: theft.
West’s campaign acknowledged Tuesday in a letter to the Federal Election Commission that someone with access to the campaign’s bank account, but not affiliated with the campaign itself, stole $3,999 in campaign funds to pay off credit card bills.
The thefts occurred in late 2021 and early 2022, West’s campaign said.
“It has been determined that the disbursement for $1474 on 12/9/21, $1280 on 2/8/22 and $1245 on 2/22/22 was an external fraud situation,” the letter reads. “After investigating, it was determined that an individual not connected with the campaign accessed a campaign account to pay his own credit card.”
The letter further stated that West’s campaign sought, but could not get the money back from the First Bank of Wyoming, where the campaign had an account. “The bank was unable to reverse the transactions at issue due to the way they were presented for payment,” the campaign wrote the FEC.
The Kanye 2020 campaign still had $392,000 in cash on hand as of March 31,” according to FEC records.
Theft from federal-level political campaign committees is more common than many Americans realize. Insider last year reported that thieves struck dozens of political committees during the 2020 election cycle, collectively lifting more than $2.7 million.
A representative for West — also known as Ye — could not immediately be reached for comment. But as the lyrics to West’s song “Heaven and Hell” state: “Men go work and some go stealing / Everyone’s got to make a living.”
As for West, an investigation from The Daily Beast previously found that his campaign was largely run by GOP operatives with the goal of re-electing President Donald Trump into office.
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