A constituent of Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan has filed a complaint with the independent Office of Congressional Conduct alleging that the congressman broke a federal law and violated House rules by airing an official communication as part of his campaign.
Adriane Heine, of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, is asking the office to investigate a taxpayer-funded promotional video that Bresnahan’s congressional office aired in July. She accuses Bresnahan’s campaign of also distributing the video as a political advertisement, according to the complaint, which NOTUS reviewed.
The Bresnahan campaign said an error was made when the congressman’s campaign and congressional offices were verifying their respective Google ad accounts after prolonged inactivity. This caused the video in question to appear as a political campaign ad within a public Google database of advertisements. A vendor for the campaign, Arena Mail and Digital, later worked to resolve the issue with Google.