title: Democratic presidential contender O'Malley investigated over furniture purchases: Post
text: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley, a former Maryland governor, is under investigation for buying furniture from the state executive mansion at sharply discounted prices as he left office, The Washington Post reported on Friday. The O’Malley family paid $9,638 for beds, chairs, desk lamps, mirrors and other items from the mansion’s living quarters after the administration declared them “excess property,” the paper said. The furnishing originally cost $62,000, according to The Baltimore Sun, which first reported the furniture purchase and the investigation, the Post said. The Post cited Haley Morris, a spokeswoman for O’Malley’s presidential campaign, as saying the investigation by the Anne Arundel County state’s attorney office was “a bogus political attack that the Maryland Republicans have tried to make stick.” Morris said O’Malley bought the furniture under the same procedures used by his predecessor when he moved out of the executive mansion, the Post reported. O’Malley has said he followed the procedures outlined to him by the state and paid the depreciated rate for the furniture as laid out by the state’s Department of General Services. O’Malley is lagging far behind Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.      (Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Bernadette Baum) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency.