When New York Attorney General Letitia James travels on campaign business, receipts suggest she has expensive tastes — and a remarkably creative way of accounting for them. While most New Yorkers hunt for economy flights and Expedia deals, James’s campaign credit card tells a tale of private jets, luxury suites, and airlines. The campaign shows a peculiar talent for classifying identical expenses in wildly different ways. You won’t find her expensing trips to Canada in winter, but airline tickets bounce between “Transportation” and “Office” categories, while the same hotel stay might be classified variously as “Lodging,” “Transportation,” and “Office” — all with identical explanations.
Perhaps no expense better illustrates this pattern than the campaign’s approach to air travel.
Private Jets and Creative Calculations
The crown jewel of James’s travel expenses is a $12,049 payment to Venture Jets, a private charter service, in May 2022. This single charge could’ve funded 40-50 commercial flights at the campaign’s typical rates. With light jets costing $5,000-$15,000 per hour, this likely represents a mere 2.4 hours of flight time.
For context, this one payment exceeded the campaign’s entire 2020 travel budget ($5,919). What urgent campaign business required eschewing the hundreds of commercial flights typically booked? Perhaps the peanuts weren’t artisanal enough.
The private jet splurge anchored a month of luxury: $1,221 at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis, $1,992 at the SLS Hotel Beverly Hills (across three charges), plus commercial flights and travel insurance. May 2022’s total: over $17,700, nearly triple 2020’s full-year travel spending.
Even luxury, it seems, demands a safety net when you’re using other people’s money – the campaign bought additional insurance from Allianz ($67) and Travel Guard Group ($146).
While private jets represent one form of luxury travel, the campaign’s choice of destinations tells an equally compelling story of high-end tastes and creative bookkeeping.
Martha’s Vineyard: Where Crime Never Takes a Vacation (But Accounting Gets Creative)
When New York’s summer heat becomes unbearable, James’s campaign somehow finds urgent business in more temperate locales. Campaign records show a remarkable talent for scheduling “official business” in premium vacation destinations during their most expensive seasons — with equally remarkable expense classifications.
The Vineyard spending began in August 2021, when the campaign needed not one but two properties:
Macon Property Management LLC: $2,000 total
- August 10, 2021: $2,000 – Expense category: “Office,” explanation: “Martha’s Vineyard House Rental”
Edgar Hotel Martha’s Vineyard: $2,604 total
- August 18, 2021: $1,879 – Expense category: “Office,” explanation: “Hotel Stay for FR”
- August 17, 2021: $725 – Expense category: “Office,” explanation: “Hotel Stay for FR”
Two years later, the campaign’s Vineyard habits reached new heights. Latest filings show a peak season splurge spanning multiple properties:
Nathan’s Luxlifestyle, Vineyard Haven: $4,335 total
- August 31, 2023: Expense category: “Lodging,” no explanation provided
Followed by:
Edgar Hotel Martha’s Vineyard: $1,414 total
- September 5, 2023: Expense category: “Office,” explanation: “Staff retreat”
The pattern continues: luxury accommodations during peak season, with expense categories fluctuating between “Lodging” and “Office” — in this case, a five-day late summer stay split between properties and expense categories.
2023 By the Numbers: A Year of Luxury Travel (and Creative Accounting)
In 2023 alone, James’s campaign spent lavishly on luxury travel, with its most striking patterns emerging in Puerto Rico. While Martha’s Vineyard serves as a summer retreat, when New York politicians need to “address Hispanic community issues,” they somehow always manage to do it from a sunny Caribbean beach in November — with expenses that showcase remarkably creative accounting.
The year’s luxury destination spending:
Puerto Rico: $13,751 total
- November Somos Conference: $11,699
- Hotel Caribe: $9,186
- Condado Palm Inn: $2,513
- February: Royal Sonesta San Juan – $1,154
- July: Condado Palm Inn – $898
Martha’s Vineyard: $5,749 total
- August peak season: Nathan’s Luxlifestyle – $4,335
- September: Edgar Hotel – $1,414
Total 2023 luxury resort spending exceeded $19,500 (excluding airfare, transportation, and meals). But it’s not just the amount that raises eyebrows — it’s how these tropical excursions are classified in campaign filings.
The 2023 Somos conference offers a masterclass in creative accounting. Apparently, solving New York’s problems requires multiple oceanfront resorts with ever-changing expense categories:
Hotel Caribe: $9,186 total
- November 1: $3,581 – Expense category: “Lodging,” explanation: “Conference stay”
- November 8: $3,458 – Expense category: “Transportation,” explanation: “Conference stay”
- October 26: $2,147 – Expense category: “Office,” explanation: “Conference stay”
Not satisfied with one luxury resort? The campaign’s spending at Condado Palm Inn shows similar creative accounting:
Condado Palm Inn: $2,513 total
- November 14: $1,267 – Expense category: “Lodging,” explanation: “Conference attendance”
- November 14: $1,246 – Expense category: “Office,” explanation: “Conference attendance”
These charges were made on the same day, at the same hotel, with the same explanation, yet received different expense categories. This follows the pattern seen at Hotel Caribe, where identical “Conference stay” explanations somehow warranted three different expense categories (“Lodging,” “Transportation,” and “Office”).
But why limit yourself to one tropical getaway when donors are footing the bill? Campaign records reveal a year-round appreciation for San Juan’s charms:
- February 2023: Royal Sonesta San Juan – $1,154 (because winter in New York is rough)
- July 2023: Condado Palm Inn – Four identical charges of $225 each (because one room just isn’t enough?)
While the destination spending shows clear patterns of creative classification, the campaign’s handling of basic travel expenses reveals even more systematic inconsistencies.
Airlines: A Tale of Classification Confusion
Beyond destination expenses, a deep dive into James’s airline expenses reveals a perplexing pattern: identical explanations for flights are filed under different expense categories with no apparent logic. Campaign finance regulations require consistent application of expense categories for similar types of spending, yet these records show that basic travel expenses like airfare are classified differently even when serving the same purpose. The records show consistent explanations but wildly inconsistent expense categorizations:
2021’s Creative Categorization:
- October 25: Three airline charges, all with the explanation “Airfare” but filed under different expense categories:
- Delta Airlines ($497) – Expense category: “Office”
- Delta Airlines ($754) – Expense category: “Transportation”
- JetBlue ($269) – Expense category: “Transportation”
2022’s Classification Chaos:
- May 18-19: A series of Delta Airlines charges shows particularly creative categorization:
- May 18: $767 – Expense category: “Office,” explanation: “Airfare”
- May 19: Three $199 charges – Expense category: “Transportation,” explanation: “Travel”
- Same airline, same week, different expense categories
2023’s Expense Category Shuffle:
- Similar travel charges categorized differently:
- September 5: Delta Airlines ($503) – Expense category: “Office,” explanation: “Travel”
- November 12: JetBlue ($463) – Expense category: “Office,” explanation: “Travel”
- August: JetBlue charges ($478, $511, $751) – Expense category: “Transportation,” no explanation provided
The inconsistent classification of airline expenses finds its mirror in the campaign’s hotel bookings, where similar patterns emerge with even greater frequency — and even more striking creativity.
Hotels: Same Stay, Different Categories
The campaign’s hotel expenses continue to reveal patterns of creative categorization beyond the luxury destinations already detailed. While campaign finance rules require consistent categorization of similar expenses, the records show an evolving approach to hotel classifications.
Recent luxury stays follow the now-familiar pattern of splitting charges across multiple categories. The Beverly Wilshire hotel in Los Angeles saw $3,120.42 in spending across four separate transactions from November 12-16, 2021 – though in this case, all were categorized simply as “Lodging.”
However, earlier records show a different approach. Instead of splitting hotel stays between “Lodging,” “Office,” and “Transportation” categories as seen in recent filings, the campaign previously used a new expense category altogether – “Other: Must Provide Explanation”:
El San Juan Hotel (2018) – Multiple charges all explained as “Somos Conference”:
- November 8: Two charges ($625 and $753) – Expense category: “Other: Must Provide Explanation”
- November 11: $175 charge – Expense category: “Other: Must Provide Explanation”
Hyatt Place Pasadena (2020) – Same-day charges both explained as “Hotel Stay”:
- $453 charge – Expense category: “Other: Must Provide Explanation”
- $466 charge – Expense category: “Other: Must Provide Explanation”
From private jets to beachfront conferences, from summer retreats to winter getaways, a clear pattern emerges in both spending choices and accounting practices.
Understanding the Pattern (Or Trying To)
New York law permits using campaign funds for official duties, but James’s interpretation seems extraordinarily broad in both scope and classification. The pattern suggests more than simple accounting errors or casual inconsistency — it reveals a systematic approach to expense categorization that obscures rather than clarifies spending patterns.
The campaign’s approach to categorizing expenses is most revealing in what it chooses to highlight versus hide. While luxury accommodations in vacation destinations merit creative splitting across multiple expense categories, traditional campaign travel remains notably different in both destination and documentation.
The timing tells its own story. The campaign consistently finds “urgent official business” in premium vacation destinations during their peak seasons — Martha’s Vineyard in August, Puerto Rico in November, never the reverse. Each tropical conference and beachfront meeting is meticulously explained as business, while being carefully scattered across expense categories in ways that make systematic review more challenging.
Observers should closely monitor James’s filings to see which tropical locales suddenly demand her presence, and how those expenses are ultimately classified. After all, who knows what urgent official business might arise at a beachfront “conference” facility? The smart money says those stays will be coded as anything but “vacation” — the only real question is which creative combination of expense categories will be deployed to explain the next seasonal migration to luxury destinations.
Written by Sam Antar
© 2024 Sam Antar. All rights reserved.
Source: All expense data was obtained from public campaign finance disclosure reports filed with the New York State Board of Elections