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One wall displays a framed, canceled check that Marilyn Monroe wrote for an order of chili.

“You know, there is three things: Yesterday is a canceled check. Today is cash. And tomorrow is a promissory note. Let us forget about the canceled checks, let us talk of the cash and the promissory notes.”

The Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit watchdog organization, filed an FEC complaint against Santos and Marks this month detailing problems it found in his campaign’s reports, including an outsized number of expenses just below the $200 threshold at which the campaign would be required to retain a receipt, invoice or canceled check.

Dozens of the expenditures listed in the reports, including seven his campaign made at Il Bacco in the 2022 cycle, are in increments of $199.99, the maximum amount committees can spend without keeping a receipt, invoice or canceled check.

It notes that his campaign reported “an astounding 40 disbursements between $199 and $200, including 37 disbursements of exactly $199.99,” thereby eluding requirements to keep a receipt, invoice or canceled check for all spending above $200.