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Gov. Mike Braun’s former U.S. Senate campaign is suing its ex-treasurer for improperly reporting loans and transactions to the Federal Election Commission.
The lawsuit alleges Braun and the campaign suffered reputational damage, citing articles in Forbes, the USA Today and IndyStar which caused “grave losses of political and financial support worth thousands, possibly millions, of dollars.”
The FEC fined the campaign, now called the Freedom & Opportunity Fund, $159,000 in 2024 for failure to correctly disclose loans, terms, dates, repayment amounts, forgiveness, outstanding balances and guarantor information for transactions totaling $11.5 million from July 2017 through December 2018.
The transactions involved three bank loans, 13 lines of credit and 13 candidate loans.
The FEC audit found another $97,000 in loans and lines of credit were not disclosed at all, according to the lawsuit.
The Freedom & Opportunity Fund is now seeking to recover those funds as well as undetermined damages in a lawsuit filed Feb. 26 in Dubois County Superior Court, where Braun’s home of Jasper is located.
The complaint describes Travis Kabrick as “grossly negligent,” alleging the former campaign treasurer destroyed files, abruptly quit and failed to respond to the campaign following his departure.
The FEC identified errors in “every single regularly filed report submitted” by the campaign while Kabrick acted as treasurer, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint contends Kabrick “held himself out to [the campaign] as an ‘experienced FEC compliance professional who had worked for many federal candidate committees over many years,” and that the campaign provided Kabrick with all necessary information and documentation to accurately report to the FEC.
The lawsuit lists Wisconsin-based Same Day Processing, Inc., which employed Kabrick during the campaign, as a co-defendant.
The Indiana Capital Chronicle reached out to Kabrick and the company for comment. Neither responded before publication.
The campaign filed the lawsuit one day before the two-year statute of limitations for breach of fiduciary duty expired.
“A political committee is virtually powerless without a treasurer,” the complaint states.
Kabrick “utterly and systematically failed in these duties, as illustrated by the FEC’s findings” and “also failed in his duties by abdicating his record-keeping responsibilities when he destroyed or removed [the campaign’s] records,” the lawsuit alleges.
Attorney James Bopp, Jr. — a veteran conservative lawyer representing the campaign — said this is among the worst negligence examples he’s witnessed in his career.
“I represented a lot of campaigns, and I’ve done a lot of FEC work. … And this is really pretty serious for what I’ve seen over the years,” he said.
Bopp said the campaign is seeking to recover the $159,000 fine in addition to attorney fees and reputational damages, which he suggested could total hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The renamed fund raised $5,000 in 2025 and had $103,000 cash on hand at the end of the year.
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