This Congressman Illegally Used Campaign Funds To Buy Steam Games

Who can resist a good Steam sale? Not U.S. congressman Duncan Hunter, apparently. The California Republican showed up to court yesterday, where he pleaded guilty to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds on personal expenses. And some of that money, it turns out, was spent on Steam games.

According to Polygon, Hunter copped to using over $150,000 on things like groceries, hotel rooms, and — rather bizarrely — plane tickets for two pet rabbits. A little over $1,300, however, went toward game purchases on Valve's massive digital storefront. That's a rather staggering amount when you think about it. Sure, a new release will set you back $60, but there are always games on sale, and some lower budget titles and indie projects sell far below that $60 price point. We imagine Hunter has a fairly healthy Steam library now, with a backlog the size of, well, California.

Now we'll have to research whether PC gaming is allowed in prison or not; the max sentence for Hunter's crime is reportedly five years behind bars and a $250,000 fine. It's unknown at this time whether Hunter will land in jail as a result of the crime, or whether he'll instead receive some sort of lesser punishment. If he does wind up in the slammer, though, we'd recommend a gaming laptop over a desktop. Jail cells are very, very tiny.

It's highly doubtful we'll ever learn which games were purchased by Hunter, but we're going to hold out hope that somehow, someway, that news gets out. We'd love to know if his campaign donations were used to purchase Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, for instance. Or if perhaps he's a big fan of Japanese dating sims and decided to stock up on those. Should more information come out about this very interesting detail of Congressman Hunter's crime, we'll be sure to let you know.