Karoline Leavitt’s campaign still owes more than $300,000 to creditors: report

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt holds a press briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 30, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Trump White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt‘s old congressional campaign still owes creditors more than $326,000 — and they have little chance of collecting, according to a NOTUS report citing a new Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing.

The debts of the campaign, from 2022, are largely from supporters who donated more than federal law permits. The total of those excessive contributions amounts to more than $210,000. NOTUS reports that federal law requires campaigns to not spend those funds, but Leavitt’s campaign currently has no cash on hand.

Leavitt, a congressional candidate from New Hampshire, lost her 2022 race to Democrat Chris Pappas. Her campaign has made no progress in raising funds to retire those debts, NOTUS notes, according to her committee’s filing.

Many political campaigns carry debt — sometimes hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars — for years after the election, NOTUS reported. “But the Leavitt campaign debt is different, since a significant portion requires refunds for contributions that exceeded the legal limit by hundreds or thousands of dollars.”

While an FEC complaint was filed in 2022, there’s been no update.

The FEC “has been unable to take enforcement action of any sort since May 1, 2025, when the campaign finance regulator entered a de facto shutdown after losing the minimum number of commissioners to perform such high level duties.” Trump has nominated two new commissioners, but they are awaiting Senate confirmation, and no hearing has been announced.

The New Hampshire Bulletin last year reported that “campaigns are required to repay donors anything over the limit, which at the time was $2,900 per election, within 60 days, per FEC regulations. Leavitt’s campaign appears to not have done that based on this disclosure.”

Last year, OpenSecrets reported that by law, “federal political candidates are not personally liable for their committees’ campaign debt,” and her campaign’s “options for making creditors whole are limited.”

Candidates like Leavitt could “personally contribute money to their campaign committee, which in turn may pay people and companies owed money. But federal records indicate that this is rare.”

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