Sen. Roger Marshall’s (R-KS) chief of staff, Brent Robertson, charged $44,000 to the public over the past two years to cover travel between D.C. and his home in Lynchburg, Virginia, Politico reported on Wednesday.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Marshall’s office about those payments in June and ultimately decided against running a story on them after a spokesperson for the senator claimed at the time that the expenses did not cover trips related to his normal work commute. That claim appears to be contradicted by new information revealed by Politico.
Critics think Marshall’s application of Senate rules violated their intent and have suggested that, independent of technical definitions, Robertson appeared to be using public funds to subsidize his work travel to and from D.C., which could be characterized as a “taxpayer-funded commute,” as Politico described it.
“If the home of Marshall’s chief of staff, Brian Robertson, is his ‘remote duty station,’ Robertson should not be commuting hardly at all to Washington, D.C.,” Public Citizen congressional ethics lobbyist Craig Holman told the Washington Examiner. “The remote duty designation identifies the remote location as the primary office. Robertson is supposed to be doing telework. Communications between the primary office and DC should be via zoom, email or phone and only on rare occasion involve commuting to D.C. Given the large commuting budget for Robertson, his primary office certainly seems to be at the Capitol and not at home.”
Marshall’s office, naturally, sees things differently. In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Marshall spokeswoman Payton Fuller said that the Politico article “was a bizarre hit piece and the headline bordered libel,” referencing the outlet’s use of the phrase “taxpayer-funded commute” in its title.
Fuller told Politico that Senate rules permitted Marshall to designate a remote duty station for Robertson at his home address in Lynchburg, which would make it permissible for the chief of staff to expense his work trips into D.C. and back home to Virginia.
“Like the 20 or so other Senate Chiefs who live outside of DC, Brent is not at all unique in getting reimbursed for official work travel to and from Washington,” Fuller said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
“By subsidizing Robertson’s regular commute from home to the office, Marshall appears to be violating the spirit, if not the fact, of Senate ethics rules,” Holman continued. “This is why Congress needs to further clarify the terms and conditions for remote work as provided in the pending Telework Reform Act of 2025.”
“After a gang shooting struck his wife’s vehicle outside their D.C. condo, Brent and his family made the decision last year to move to Virginia,” Fuller told Politico.
On top of the over $40,000 Robertson billed the public to cover his trips to and from Lynchburg, Robertson also had his travel from Lynchburg to destinations like Las Vegas, Kansas, Ohio, and Missouri covered.
“Reimbursement of $33,000 annually for commuting from home to work for a senior congressional staffer — or anybody, for that matter — is an exorbitant amount,” Holman told the Washington Examiner when contacted about the story in June. Holman was referring to Robertson’s total travel reimbursement as of June, with subsequent disclosures having increased the total since then.
One such increase included per diem payment of $10,000 for one trip to D.C. between Jan. 14 and Jan. 23, a date range aligning with the second inauguration of President Donald Trump.
For some of Robertson’s taxpayer-funded trips, social media posts and campaign finance records provide a glimpse into what the public paid for.
Tommy Andrews, a principal at the lobbying firm Squire Patton Boggs, posted to LinkedIn on April 22, 2024, to commemorate hosting Marshall and Robertson, alongside representatives from Kroger, at a professional baseball game in Cincinnati.
Senate expense reports show that Robertson received roughly $5,000 worth of travel and per diem reimbursements for a trip beginning on April 21, 2024, from Lynchburg to Cincinnati, then back to Lynchburg via Texas.
Days after rubbing shoulders with lobbyists and corporate leaders at a ball game, Marshall’s reelection campaign raked in thousands of dollars in contributions from seven Kroger executives, including $2,700 from the grocery chain’s CEO, according to campaign finance records. Other Cincinnati area business leaders also cut checks to Marshall’s campaign shortly after the Ohio trip.
Holman told the Washington Examiner in June that Robertson’s tens of thousands of dollars in reimbursements are “not likely to be deemed acceptable upon official review.”
