O’Donnell spokesman Matthew Moran said O’Donnell was advised by her attorney to reserve “several hundred thousand dollars” for after Election Day to use for legal challenges resulting from her campaign – such as a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission filed by the state GOP during the primary and a criminal complaint filed with the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The campaign was also holding on to money for “the inevitable FEC wrap-ups because we had so many small donors, etc.” that ongoing legal actions could drag on for “years,” Moran wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO. “Lastly, much of that money came in so late that we could not spend it effectively and would not recklessly put the campaign into debt … obviously, all checks that came in dated after the election were returned by Friends of Christine O’Donnell.”