UPDATED: This story isn't real, right?

Jillian Bandes | March 29, 2010 11:26 AM

RNC Chairman Michael Steele has reportedly spent about $2,000 of donors' money at a bondage-themed nightclub in Hollywood.

According to a new Federal Election Commission filing, Steele spent $1,946.25 at Voyeur West Hollywood, which features topless women in

what one Yelp reviewer called "a really sexy/gothic experience." That experience would include women imitating oral sex, according to many reports.

In the same trip, Steele spent $9,099 at the Beverly Hills hotel and $6,596 at a Four Seasons.

My headline suggests disbelief, but if proven true, this could be enough for Steele's ouster. It seems so incredible, though, that I've got to hold out for something like card theft. The RNC has not yet commented.

UPDATE:

National Review touches base with a RNC spokesman:

We are investigating the expenditure in question. The story willfully and erroneously suggests that the expenditure in question was one belonging to the chairman. This was a reimbursement made to a non-committee staffer. The chairman was never at the location in question, he had no knowledge of the expenditure, nor does he find the use of committee funds at such a location at all acceptable. Good reporting would make that distinction crystal clear. The committee has requested that the monies be returned to the committee and that the story be corrected so that it is accurate.

In other words, "Steele's expenses," may not necessarily have been "Steele's expenses." It might have been the expenses of one of the staffers under his charge.

More developments are sure to follow...