This article is made possible through Spotlight PA’s partnership with NOTUS, a nonpartisan news organization that covers government and politics with the fresh eyes of early career journalists and the expertise of veteran reporters.
A constituent of Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan has filed a complaint with the independent Office of Congressional Conduct alleging that the congressman broke a federal law and violated House rules by airing an official communication as part of his campaign.
Adriane Heine, of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, is asking the office to investigate a taxpayer-funded promotional video that Bresnahan’s congressional office aired in July. She accuses Bresnahan’s campaign of also distributing the video as a political advertisement, according to the complaint, which NOTUS reviewed.
The Bresnahan campaign said an error was made when the congressman’s campaign and congressional offices were verifying their respective Google ad accounts after prolonged inactivity. This caused the video in question to appear as a political campaign ad within a public Google database of advertisements. A vendor for the campaign, Arena Mail and Digital, later worked to resolve the issue with Google.
The video describes the congressman’s Local Farmers Feeding Our Communities Act, a bill to help farmers sell and distribute their food. It contains a link to Bresnahan’s official website and a disclaimer that the video was made using funds authorized by the U.S. House of Representatives.
“To be clear, this was an official ad paid for with official funds and approved through the franking process,” Hannah Pope, Bresnahan’s spokesperson, said in a statement to NOTUS. “A clerical error by the vendor and Google resulted in an initial mislabeling of the piece as connected to the campaign, which was later rectified.”
Bresnahan, like all federal lawmakers, may use taxpayer funds to communicate with their constituents for “official business” in a practice known on Capitol Hill as “franking.” But “official communications should not be used for political or personal business” and “no campaign content or electioneering” is allowed, according to House guidance.
The Bresnahan video is no longer shown on Google under the campaign account, titled “Rob for PA.” Currently, it appears on two other official accounts: “U.S. House of Representatives Congressman Rob Bresnahan” and “Congressman Rob Bresnahan.”
The Bresnahan campaign sent NOTUS an email exchange between Google and the vendor in which the vendor attempts to resolve the link between the “Rob for PA” account and the official congressional account that indicates the Bresnahan campaign had an error within their registration information. Google did not immediately reply to a request for comment from NOTUS.
A number of Bresnahan advertisements bearing the congressional office’s official logo and URL also appeared on ad tracking site AdImpact as “election” ads for Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District. A spokesperson for AdImpact told NOTUS that the website made an error.
“Ultimately, this was our clerical error,” John Link, senior vice president at AdImpact, told NOTUS. “This has nothing to do with PA-8. … That data is updated and reflected.”
Molly Vroom, the director of ad operations at The Franking Group, further told NOTUS that the issue was the result of an oversight in the advertisement’s verification process. The group, a digital mail and advertising firm, worked with Bresnahan on the official communication.
“As soon as it was identified, our team worked with Google to correct the issue and ensure the ad campaign was properly reported moving forward,” Vroom said. “Put simply, this was a clerical reporting error that has absolutely nothing to do with Congressman Bresnahan.”
Heine told NOTUS that she’s nevertheless proceeding with her complaint against Bresnahan.
“It sounds like someone is covering their tracks,” Heine said. “They got called out on it, so they had to backpedal. But it doesn’t make up for the fact that they did this in an unethical way, originally.”
Pope, Bresnahan’s spokesperson, disagreed.
“Make no mistake, this is a politically motivated complaint, based on completely inaccurate information,” she said.
Bresnahan is locked in one of the nation’s most competitive House races. He faces Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, a Democrat, in a race the Cook Political Report has deemed a “toss up.”
Cognetti’s campaign said in a statement that Bresnahan is the “poster child of corruption.”
“Rob has spent his time in office serving himself at the expense of Northeastern Pennsylvanians,” Cognetti spokesperson Emma Mustion said.
Bresnahan previously came under scrutiny for his once-prolific stock trading. The multimillionaire made more than 650 individual stock trades in 2025, federal records show, but he has since stopped trading individual stocks.
“I wanted it to come to the forefront so that we as voters, or people that he represents, would be aware of it,” Heine told NOTUS. “His constituents need to hold him accountable for his moves. So it’s very important to watch what he’s doing with our money. It’s our money.”
The Office of Congressional Conduct, previously known as the Office of Congressional Ethics, is an independent, nonpartisan body tasked with investigating allegations of misconduct against House lawmakers, officers and staff.
The office cannot issue binding rulings and penalties itself, although it may refer its findings to the House Ethics Committee for further consideration. Its investigations often take months, and it’s unlikely the office will fully process Heine’s complaint before the November election. Under the panel’s rules, there is a so-called “blackout period” when it cannot launch an investigation, 60 days before an election.