Campaign finance group seeks investigation into Roger Marshall’s alleged ethics violations

TOPEKA — A national campaign finance watchdog group requested the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee investigate U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas for using taxpayer funds to travel to political events and staff who work for both his office and campaign. 

End Citizens United, a PAC that supports campaign finance guardrails, compiled allegations from the past six years examining Marshall’s travel, his office staff’s expenses and communications and the absence of paid campaign staff in federal campaign finance reports.

The 22-page letter details trips Marshall took to New Orleans, where he attended the Sugar Bowl, to New York City for television appearances that coincided with boosts in fundraising, and a pattern of arranging at least one official meeting for trips to Dallas, Chicago and Philadelphia so that taxpayer dollars could fund the trips.

Across two trips to New York City in 2023 and 2025 where the only publicly identifiable official events were live appearances on Fox News, the organization found Marshall and his office staff spent a combined $23,000 in office funds for travel and per diem while the campaign took almost $120,000 from New York-area donors. 

The use of office funds for political travel and evidence of Marshall’s staff conducting campaign work without receiving campaign salaries provide the basis for the letter’s allegations, which Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United, said are among “the most egregious examples of government waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars.”

She urged the committee to investigate Marshall immediately. 

“While Kansans are working hard to make ends meet, Roger Marshall seems to think public office comes with an unlimited expense account courtesy of the American taxpayer,” Muller said. “The sheer arrogance of thinking he can simply declare a personal or campaign activity as official business to justify sticking taxpayers with the bill is astounding.”

The letter repeatedly relied on a joint investigation from Kansas Reflector and MS NOW, which obtained audio, video, photos, calendar items and screenshots of more than 200 text messages involving Marshall and his staff from 2020, when he first ran for Senate. Legal and ethics experts said the records appear to show Marshall and his top aide repeatedly crossed the line in terms of using congressional staff and government resources for a campaign.

Kansas Reflector and MS NOW also reviewed campaign finance reports, expenses and financial disclosures, and talked to multiple former staffers who recounted instances where the taxpayer-funded Senate office functioned more as an arm of the campaign.

In one instance revealed in the investigation and referenced in the letter, Marshall, then a U.S. representative, called a mandatory all-staff meeting in which he discussed campaign strategy. Following the call, staff documented in text messages their concern that Marshall violated Senate ethics rules.

​​The Senate Ethics Manual dictates it is “inappropriate to use any official resources to conduct campaign or political activities,” and Senate appropriations are for official representational and legislative duties.

Brent Robertson, Marshall’s chief of staff who is named numerous times in the letter’s allegations, told Kansas Reflector and MS NOW that the campaign does have paid staff. He said they are paid through an affiliated PAC that funds Marshall’s campaign. 

Payton Fuller, a spokesperson for Marshall’s office and campaign who appears in the letter, did not respond to Kansas Reflector’s request for comment for this story.

The letter detailed the senator’s itinerary for the late 2022, early 2023 trip to New Orleans where Marshall attended the Sugar Bowl that featured Kansas State University’s football team. It showed Marshall traveled from Washington, D.C., to Sarasota, Florida, where Marshall had a vacation home, to New Orleans and back to Sarasota before traveling to four cities in Kansas before returning to Washington.

“Put simply, taxpayers sent the Senator from Washington to Sarasota, Florida — to the location of his beachfront vacation home and the reported destination of at least 14 taxpayer-funded trips between 2021 and 2024 — then to New Orleans, then back to Sarasota, before he ever set foot in Kansas,” the letter said.

Campaign finance records also showed two disbursements dated Jan. 3, 2023, to New Orleans restaurants: $245.43 to Tujague’s and $421.21 to Justine.

The letter said it was unclear whether the $4,000 trip to New Orleans served any official purpose.

“It would be highly unusual for Senator Marshall to engage in any official activity during the holiday period, and the record contains no evidence of any official activity in New Orleans,” the letter said.

In a September 2025 trip to New York City, the itineraries for Marshall, Robertson and Fuller totaled $12,516.15, according to the letter. 

“And every one of them appears to have billed taxpayers per diem above the federal government’s standard rates — the Senator’s alone topped $1,000 a night — in a city where the maximum General lodging and meal rates were $342 and $92, respectively,” the letter said.

That trip also coincided with an influx in campaign contributions from the New York area, the letter said. The organization found 35 contributions, totaling $69,900, from 34 donors in the New York City area dated Sept. 10 through Sept. 16. Marshall was there from Sept. 11 to Sept. 14.

As Marshall has campaigned in a close race with his Democratic challenger, the Rev. Adam Hamilton, the letter said a pattern of questionable financial practices has continued. In federal campaign finance reports that encompass activity through Sept. 30, Marshall’s campaign, joint fundraising committee and leadership PAC have not reported salary or payroll payments, the letter said.

In the most recent filing, federal election records show Marshall’s campaign paid roughly $3,500 to Abbi Enders for campaign consulting and reimbursement on Sept. 3. Enders is also an assistant press secretary in Marshall’s Senate office.

“It is not plausible that a campaign spending at this scale has no staff,” the letter said.

Hamilton’s campaign spokesperson, Glynnis Harvey, said Marshall “is an example of Washington corruption at its worst.”

She said the details that continue to emerge about Marshall’s office are “deeply concerning” and “clearly warrant a deep and thorough ethics investigation.”

Hamilton previously called for an ethics investigation into Marshall’s use of taxpayer dollars.

Sherman Smith contributed to this story.