A Political Life, Foiled by Bars and Walmart

SAN DIEGO — In Alpine, California, a suburban Southern California enclave, Duncan Hunter was a good neighbor. He’d help people do yard work, or move heavy furniture. He drove the same dented-up truck for years. At parties, he’d have a beer, two tops, and he might go off and sneak a cigarette so his wife wouldn’t see. He rarely talked about his job as a congressman.

In Washington, Hunter was a fixture on the bar scene, and spent lavishly — over $400 for 30 tequila shots at a bachelor party, and countless fancy dinners. He visited one of his favorite bars sometimes multiple times a day, piling up thousands of dollars in tabs. On occasion, he would get into loud arguments with patrons, once over the choice of music on the jukebox (he hated Celine Dion).

Those divergent lives — between the watering holes and halls of power in Washington and the suburban tracts and chain stores of Southern California — intersected for years, prosecutors say, as Hunter and his wife funded their personal lives with campaign donations, the dimensions of which were revealed in an indictment last week.

Hunter, 41, once boasted a glittering political resume that touched all the right notes in his conservative district: war hero, father to three young children, scion of a political dynasty in Southern California, where his father held power for almost 30 years. His brash personality, tough talk on national security and hard-line immigration views — he was, “Trump before Trump,” staffers like to say — ensured a loyal following among his constituents.

For all his apparent appeal as a congressman, the unspooling of Hunter’s life has laid bare the reservations among associates and friends who long wondered whether politics was a career path he had ever wanted to fulfill. Now, whatever promise he had has been threatened, with possible far-reaching consequences for the party and his personal life.

The indictment, interviews with those who know him and his own personal statements show how a seemingly ideal political life unraveled under personal financial pressure, opening the door to a web of corruption and deception that lasted several years as Hunter lived a seemingly dual life.

For Republicans facing an extraordinarily difficult midterm election, the reports about Hunter could not have come at a worse time, officials in both parties said.

Hunter, who has stepped down from his House committees, including the Armed Services Committee that his father once chaired, has sought to blame his wife for the corruption charges, saying in a Fox News interview that she was responsible for the couple’s finances. “Whatever she did, that will be looked at, too, I’m sure,” he said. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t spend any money illegally.” Hunter has also responded to the charges by blaming a “deep state” conspiracy.

Hunter says he is determined to stay on the ballot. And in a heavily Republican district, running against a first-time Democratic opponent who is the son of an Arab father and Mexican mother, he still maintains a strong chance of re-election.

Still, his voters have this to confront: a 47-page indictment that outlines years of allegations that Hunter and his wife spent almost a quarter of a million dollars of campaign money on personal expenses, on everything from vacations to fast-food meals, even a plane ticket for their pet, reportedly a rabbit. And in a district that has many military families, he may have committed the ultimate sin: passing off personal expenses as gifts for “wounded warriors.” For a man who is a veteran and whose political identity is tied to championing the military, this news has been particularly insulting to the veterans community.

“This is a tragic unraveling of someone who should probably never have gone to Congress,” said Nathan Fletcher, a former state assemblyman from San Diego who left the Republican Party in 2012.

In 2008, on the heels of three combat tours as a Marine, including service in Iraq during the battle for Fallujah, Hunter was elected to the congressional seat once held by his father, who had decided to run for president. He was a reluctant politician, by many accounts. But Hunter, who had designed websites and worked as a business analyst when he was not on active duty, nevertheless stepped into the role that many said his father had chosen for him.

The missteps began not long after he was elected to Congress, prosecutors now say. Hunter spent little time at home, preferring the high life of Washington to sedate suburbia, and when he did come home he spent a lot of time playing golf.

Hunter declined to comment for this article, and his wife could not be reached. On Thursday he and his wife appeared at their arraignment in San Diego and pleaded not guilty. His lawyer, Gregory Vega, told reporters, “We hope the public will keep an open mind.”

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican congressman from Southern California, defended Hunter in an interview, saying, “I know Duncan Hunter as a heroic Marine and he’s been a damn good congressman.”

He said he was unsure how the allegations might affect the election, but said that Hunter is “incredibly well respected by his constituents.”

While Hunter was in Washington, his wife, Margaret, mostly stayed in California, where she managed the campaign’s finances and struggled to keep up appearances with things like private school tuition, all on a $174,000-a-year congressman’s salary.

Politics for the Hunters is a family affair, and Margaret Hunter not only managed the campaign’s money but at times was a paid staff member. The couple reportedly met in 1992 at an election-night party for the elder Duncan Hunter’s campaign.

As 2009 was coming to a close, the United States was in the teeth of a financial crisis and Hunter was finishing his first year in office.

With the holidays approaching, Hunter addressed one of the primary concerns of his constituents: a desire for “greater financial freedom.”

“Most often, I hear concerns from working Americans about the future of their children and grandchildren, and the debt burden they will unfairly inherit,” he wrote.

A few weeks later, Hunter showed up at an Alamo rental car agency in Reno, Nevada, and with his own bank accounts nearly empty, the indictment says, he dipped into campaign funds to pay $351.04 for a rental car to drive to Lake Tahoe for a ski weekend. The document laid out an exhaustive list of expenses between 2010 and 2016 that prosecutors believe were paid for with campaign money. Days later, there were more charges: $1,008.72, for food, drinks and a room for three nights at the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Resort Spa and Casino.

His personal bank account at the time, after he withdrew $20, had $15.02 remaining. From then on, his financial record would show a nearly constant state of depleted funds and overdraft fees.

Those Reno and Lake Tahoe charges, prosecutors say, started a yearslong pattern in which the couple drew on campaign accounts to pay for what were said to be personal expenses. There was a $14,261.33 family vacation to Italy, and $32.31 at Albertsons for milk, apples, beer, chewing tobacco and a pack of cigarettes.

In some cases, the couple tried to falsely claim that personal expenses were actually meant for charitable causes. And in Italy, according to prosecutors, Hunter tried to arrange a tour of a naval facility so he could classify the trip as work-related.

In veterans’ circles, this amounted to a slap in the face. But many veterans advocates say they were always skeptical of Hunter’s motives. Many have long referred to him as a “blue falcon,” military slang for someone willing to sacrifice his friends for his own benefit.

They say he would often intervene in newsworthy cases when a veteran was in trouble — as in one case when a veteran ended up in a Mexican jail. But when it came to supporting military-friendly policies, Hunter did little, they say.

“It’s clear he was doing it to get on Fox News and call himself a hero,” said Kristofer Goldsmith, who runs High Ground Veterans Advocacy, a nonprofit.

Goldsmith said he had lobbied Hunter’s office to support a policy that would prevent the Pentagon from releasing soldiers with less-than-honorable discharges without a mental health assessment, but got nowhere.

“At some point it became clear I shouldn’t be talking to his office,” he said. The expenses outlined in the indictment were often quotidian — not the luxurious things that often produce titillating political corruption scandals. There was no $15,000 ostrich jacket, no antique rugs or a mansion in the Hamptons, to mention some of the more headline-grabbing expenses that enlivened the recent corruption trial of Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman. For the Hunters, it was often everyday expenses: the cable bill, the dentist, prescription medication, fast food restaurants like In-N-Out, trips to Walmart.

In one sense, the Hunters’ story is one of financial woe not unlike that faced by countless American families struggling to pay the basics. Yet to many they seem particularly ironic, considering Hunter’s repeated calls for fiscal responsibility.

“The federal government is like a family that has overspent and racked up too many bills,” Hunter wrote in an op-ed.

As Margaret Hunter held down the household in California, Duncan Hunter was drawing concern from colleagues in Washington about his partying, which prosecutors allege was often paid for with campaign cash. At one point, John Boehner, then the Republican leader, sat down him and his friends — known as the “bros caucus” — and told them to “knock off” their frat house antics, according to a person close to the Republican leadership at the time.

Hunter has been a regular at a number of bars near Capitol Hill, from the private Capitol Club to the congressional watering hole, Bullfeathers, just next door. There, the congressman could often be found on the patio with colleagues, drinking beer or vodka.

“He was here a lot, some days he was in here multiple times a day,” said Stephanie Connon, a manager at the bar.

Amid the allegations, associates in Washington have raised questions about whether Hunter was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. When asked about this earlier this year by a television station in San Diego, Hunter said, “I did three tours. I take my experiences with me, but I never filed for post-traumatic stress. It’s not an issue.”

Ammar Campa-Najjar, Hunter’s challenger in November, told Fox News after the indictment was issued, “I think that man who served our country never made it back from the battlefield, and I think Washington chewed him up and spat him out and he lost his way.” Back in Alpine, where the couple lived in a small cul-de-sac — they sold their house in 2016 after earlier allegations of financial misconduct emerged — former neighbors said they were shocked when the indictment was released.

Denise Myers, 58, a retired schoolteacher, lived next door to the Hunters, and she described them as a friendly, unassuming family. The charges, she said, are, “nothing I would have ever pegged him for. I don’t understand it, I really don’t. They never seemed extravagant with anything.

“Seeing all this stuff,” she said, “I can’t believe it. It’s like Jekyll and Hyde.”