Sen. Landrieu's Own Investigation Finds 43 Campaign Trips Illegally Funded By Tax Dollars

Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu sent the federal government a check for more than $33,000 after wrongly charging taxpayers for political travel over a period of 12 years, her campaign announced as part of the traditional Friday news dump.

Landrieu has been under fire for weeks for billing taxpayers for multiple private air charters to attend campaign fundraisers, which of course is a violation of federal law.

After Landrieu's abuse of taxpayer dollars was exposed the embattled Senator promised a full investigation and audit According to the Senator the results of the review was to be released publicly by the time the Senate returns on Sept. 8 from its August recess. Today, four days late and "coincidentally" a few hours after the RNC made news by releasing its own audit of the Landrieu flights, the Louisiana Senator released her own audit.

According to the released the findings of an internal investigation into her travel that found more than $33,700 in campaign flights were charged to her Senate account.

The report found 136 campaign functions were conducted during 43 trips paid for by the Senate office.

Landrieu said in a release she reported the errors to the Senate Ethics Committee and fully repaid the Treasury with campaign funds.

"The review I ordered last month found these mistakes stemming from sloppy book keeping. I take full responsibility. They should have never happened, and I apologize for this," Landrieu said. "A new system has been established that has been successfully used by a number of senate offices to provide a safeguard from this happening in the future."

The language of the release give the impression that the Senator initiated the review however she only "ordered" the investigation because she got caught by CNN.

The report (embedded below) found that Landrieu's official office paid $33,727.02 -- about 11 percent of the total amount her official office paid for chartered flights during that time -- should have been prorated and paid by her campaign.

Eleven percent! Or as some Landrieu spin-meister is about to say "hey she isn't bilking money from tax dollars 89% of the time."

The Louisiana GOP had already filed an official complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee, however, the committee typically does not launch investigations during election season.

In light of the improper flights, Landrieu said she has implemented new office procedures to prevent errors from happening in the future. One procedure she is sure to implement is nobody is allowed to talk to CNN who broke the story last month.

The Audit report is embedded below.

091214 Flight Spreadsheet by Jeffrey Dunetz