Byron Donalds wants to be Florida's next governor. For his entire time in Congress, the financial reports he filed to show voters what he owns and what he owes were wrong.

That's what Florida Bulldog reported on October 5. In June and August, Donalds quietly filed two corrections with the House clerk. Together they admit he left debts and assets off his disclosure reports going all the way back to the first one, filed when he ran for Congress in 2020.

His campaign won't say why.

What he left out

Members of Congress have to file a yearly report listing their assets and their debts. The rule dates back to Watergate. The point is simple: if voters can see who a lawmaker owes money to, they can spot a conflict of interest.

On June 4, 2026, Donalds sent the clerk his first correction. "It has been brought to my attention that my previously filed Financial Disclosure Report (FD) for 2021, 2022, 2023 & 2024 did not include disclosure of certain liabilities," he wrote. Four years of reports, and two big debts missing:

• A home mortgage from CrossCountry Mortgage, a large national lender with big operations in Florida, taken out in July 2024 and left off his 2024 report. Donalds valued the loan at between $500,000 and $1 million.
• Student loans from the U.S. Department of Education for himself and one of his children. He listed them as starting at $15,000 to $50,000 in September 2021, rising to $100,000 to $250,000 in 2022 and 2023, and then to $250,000 to $500,000 in 2024. He didn't say what they were for.

On August 13, he filed a second correction, this time for assets. His wife Erika Donalds runs OptimaEd, a for-profit charter school company in Naples. Her company retirement account held a mutual fund that Donalds never reported. It was worth $5,000 to $15,000 in 2020 and $50,000 to $100,000 by 2024. He still did not fix his 2025 report to include it. It finally showed up on the report he filed for 2026 — valued at $100,000 to $250,000.

Both times, Donalds wrote that someone else had "brought to my attention" what he'd missed. He didn't say who.

The mortgage, and the committee

The missing mortgage matters more than most debts would, because of where Donalds sits.

He is a member of the House Financial Services Committee, the committee that oversees the mortgage industry. And Florida Bulldog reports that this year he was actively involved in getting the Trump administration to roll back rules written after the 2008 housing crash. Those rules made condo buyers in states like Florida put more money down, because loose lending there helped set off the crisis. Donalds called the change a matter of fairness.

So when he filed his 2024 report, the public couldn't see that a member of the committee that oversees mortgage lenders owed one of them up to $1 million. That is exactly the kind of tie the disclosure law exists to show.

"Committed to disclosure"

Asked about it, Donalds's campaign spokesman, Gates McGavick, told Florida Bulldog: "Byron Donalds is committed to disclosure and like most Congressional Members, voluntarily updates his disclosures to ensure ongoing compliance."

McGavick would not say why the omissions happened. He would not say who pointed them out. And he would not say whether Donalds can now promise his reports are complete.

The House Ethics Committee reviews corrections like these. If it decides an error was an honest mistake, it usually accepts the fix with no penalty. If not, it can become an ethics investigation.

This isn't the first time

Donalds has been here before. In 2024, the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint saying he and his wife made 108 stock trades worth up to $1.6 million in 2022 and 2023 without filing a single one of the reports the law requires. Two years earlier he'd gone on TV demanding punishment for members of Congress who broke that same law. We covered that one in July.

Florida Bulldog also reports that the Federal Election Commission told Donalds last year that his House re-election campaign ended when he announced for governor, and that he had to refund money raised after that. His campaign treasurer wrote back the next day saying no refunds were required. According to the FEC reports Florida Bulldog reviewed, his House campaign went on to raise more than $125,000 more through June 2026.

A pattern is forming. Each time, the rules say Donalds has to tell the public something. Each time, he tells them late — after someone else catches it.

What the filings show

Byron Donalds filed two corrections this year admitting his House financial disclosures left out a CrossCountry Mortgage loan worth $500,000 to $1 million from his 2024 report, student loans that grew to $250,000 to $500,000 from four years of reports, and his wife's retirement fund going back to 2020. He sat on the committee that oversees mortgage lenders when he left the mortgage off. His campaign says he is "committed to disclosure" but won't say why the debts were left out or who caught it — the second time in two years he has had to go back and fix what he failed to report.

Source

U.S. Rep. Donalds filed inaccurate FD forms during his entire time in Congress — Florida Bulldog, October 5, 2026