Rick Santorum's rise to the top tier of the GOP race has triggered a search for skeletons in his closet. Ethics questions from Santorum's time as a US senator have resurfaced, including allegations that he received a mortgage at a preferred rate from a bank run by a campaign donor, ABC reports. The Senate Ethics Committee does not appear to have probed the mortgage loan, despite a complaint from the watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington.
Santorum is "hardly the moral paragon he purports to be," says the former federal prosecutor who runs CREW. "He violated Senate gift rules by accepting a mortgage from a bank in which he had no interest and which otherwise made loans only to its own investors." An $8 million Santorum-sponsored earmark to a developer that backed his charity is also being eyed. But the Iowa result has brought Santorum more than fresh scrutiny of his record: His campaign says he received more than $1 million in donations in the 24 hours following the caucuses, Politico reports. (More Rick Santorum 2012 stories.)
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