Christine O’Donnell denies allegation she misused campaign funds in failed Senate bid

Christine O’Donnell, who famously denied that she was a witch, said on Thursday that she was innocent of any financial irregularities connected to her failed campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Speaking on morning talk shows, O’Donnell, who rode a wave a “tea party” movement unhappiness to wrest the Senate nomination from the candidate favored by Delaware’s GOP, rejected accusations that campaign funds were misused. She also blamed liberal political enemies for persecuting her.

“There’s been no impermissible use of campaign funds whatsoever,” O’Donnell insisted on ABC.

“You have to look at this whole thug-politic tactic for what it is,” she said.

The Associated Press was the first to report that the O’Donnell campaign was being investigated by the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware. In her television appearances, O’Donnell said she learned of the probe from media reports and that she found it strange that she, her staff or her lawyers were never told of the investigation prompted by complaints from the nonpartisan group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The group’s website lists a former staffer for Joe Biden as one of its officials.

Running as the conservative outsider, O’Donnell upset Rep. Mike Castle, a moderate Republican, for the Senate nomination, throwing the GOP into turmoil. Republicans had hoped to capture Biden’s Senate seat as part of a wave that helped the GOP capture the House and increase its numbers in the Senate. Those hopes were dashed, however, when O’Donnell was handily defeated by Democrat Chris Coons.

Among the charges leveled against O’Donnell is that she used campaign funds to pay for personal expenses, including her home. She has acknowledged that she lived in a townhouse that was also used as her campaign headquarters.

In a Thursday appearance on NBC’s “Today” show, she said she used the townhouse, rented by the campaign, after her residence was vandalized. She was paying rent to the campaign, not the other way around, she said in another televised interview, with “Fox & Friends.”

Throughout, she has hinted at a liberal plot to cripple the tea party movement she represents. In a prepared statement on Wednesday, O’Donnell focused on Biden.

“Given that the king of the Delaware political establishment just so happens to be the vice president of the most liberal presidential administration in U.S. history, it is no surprise that misuse and abuse of the FBI would not be off the table,” she said.

However, she told Fox that she had no direct evidence of a political plot.

michael.muskal@latimes.com

Twitter.com/LATimesmuskal