Déjà vu: Unmasking of Tim Eyman’s deceptions leads to media field day

Yes­ter­day, Sep­tem­ber 21st, 2015, felt a lot like Feb­ru­ary 5th, 2002. That was the day that peo­ple all over Wash­ing­ton State woke up to the news that Tim Eyman had con­fessed to tak­ing over a hun­dred and fifty thou­sand dol­lars of cam­paign funds for his own per­son­al use while false­ly claim­ing he was work­ing as a volunteer.

The sto­ry had been bro­ken the night before by The Asso­ci­at­ed Press’ Dave Ammons, who now works for Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman. Ammons was tele­phoned by Eyman two days after the Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer pub­lished a sto­ry by reporter Neil Modie which ques­tioned Eyman’s sus­pi­cious pay­ments to him­self.

The sto­ry Ammons sub­se­quent­ly put out on the wire was a doozy, chock full of quotes from Eyman that revealed his true sleazy char­ac­ter. In one fell swoop, Eyman admit­ted to deceiv­ing the press, the pub­lic, his fol­low­ers, and even his own co-spon­sors, Jack and Mike Fagan and Monte Ben­ham. Here’s a selection:

• “The fact is, it is true that I made mon­ey in past cam­paigns and planned to make mon­ey on future cam­paigns… I want to con­tin­ue to advo­cate issues and I want to make a lot of mon­ey doing it.”
• “The Per­ma­nent Offense Inc. orga­ni­za­tion was set up to have a way to cov­er the fact that I was mak­ing mon­ey spon­sor­ing ini­tia­tives, and none of my co-spon­sors knew that was the case.”
• “I was in lie mode… I became rid­dled with guilt. It was the biggest lie of my life and it was over the stu­pid­est thing in the world. The biggest thing I’m guilti­est of is an enor­mous ego. Hubris.”
• “This entire cha­rade was set up so I could main­tain a moral supe­ri­or­i­ty over our oppo­si­tion, so I could say our oppo­nents make mon­ey from pol­i­tics and I don’t… It was addic­tive. I was get­ting deep­er and deep­er and deep­er into this cha­rade. I thought I found a way to make mon­ey off our ini­tia­tives with­out our oppo­nents know­ing it, or know­ing it for sure. I was too clever by half. I just got deep­er and deep­er into this lie.”

The next day, the sto­ry was car­ried in the papers:

Thir­teen and a half years have gone by since, but Eyman’s behav­ior has not changed. The Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion’s inves­ti­ga­tion into his I‑517 finances runs two hun­dred and forty-four pages, and the includ­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion con­firms what we have long sus­pect­ed: Eyman flout­ed Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic dis­clo­sure law by ille­gal­ly using dark mon­ey to qual­i­fy Ini­tia­tive 517.

What’s tru­ly fas­ci­nat­ing are the tran­scripts of the inter­views con­duct­ed by PDC staff with Eyman and his asso­ciate Eddie Agazarm. These inter­views detail the extent to which Eyman made unwrit­ten side deals with his asso­ciates that his oth­er asso­ciates were appar­ent­ly unaware of. It’s quite the tan­gled web.

The fol­low­ing exchange, in par­tic­u­lar, is very reveal­ing. It’s an excerpt from an inter­view between PDC staff and Eddie Agazarm, who owned the old Cit­i­zen Solu­tions along with Roy Ruffi­no. (Cit­i­zen Solu­tions was dis­solved and reformed as an LLC a few years ago.) In the inter­view, Agazarm claims that Ruffi­no was not enam­ored with I‑517, Agazarm and Eyman’s ini­tia­tive on ini­tia­tives, which NPI fought and defeat­ed two years ago with a diverse, bipar­ti­san coalition.

Eddie Agazarm: [Tim] was angling to get paid ear­li­er, right there in that letter.

(Dis­cussing nature of “part­ner­ship” described in July 8, 2012 email exchange)

Eddie Agazarm: Tim and I and William and Roy and I had dis­cussed at one time, Tim becom­ing a part­ner in Cit­i­zen Solu­tions. But that’s been, prob­a­bly for that rea­son, nev­er dis­cussed again.

PDC’s Phil Stutz­man: What do you think [Paul Jacob was expect­ing a pay­ment from Tim] for?

Eddie Agazarm: Maybe for consulting.

(Dis­cussing the “some­thing” Tim was work­ing on with Paul Jacob that could result in some nation­al recog­ni­tion.)

Eddie Agazarm: I would think it would be 517, but I can­not say that on first­hand knowl­edge. So I’m spec­u­lat­ing that it was 517, but it could also be oth­er things.

PDC’s Tony Perkins: What would they be work­ing on togeth­er that Tim would be reluc­tant to explain to Roy Ruffino?

Eddie Agazarm: 517.

PDC’s Tony Perkins: Why would he be reluc­tant to explain that?

Eddie Agazarm: Roy doesn’t have any­thing to do with 517. Roy didn’t like 517. If Tim want­ed to get paid to hur­ry up and help 517, or any­thing to do with 517, Roy wouldn’t… Roy was like, “no on 517” the whole time.

The above on-the-record inter­view took place on Novem­ber 8th, 2013 (which was after I‑517 had been defeat­ed), accord­ing to the tran­script of the conversation.

Here’s a run­down of the play­ers involved in the I‑517 sig­na­ture drive:

• I‑517 was a project of Eddie Agazarm, Tim Eyman, and Paul Jacob. Jack Fagan was also involved, as he filed paper­work for the ini­tia­tive cam­paign com­mit­tee with the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Commission.
• Eddie came up with the idea for I‑517 dur­ing the plan­ning for I‑1185 and involved Tim in it. How­ev­er, Eddie’s long­time part­ner at Cit­i­zen Solu­tions, Roy Ruffi­no, was most­ly left out of the loop as he was­n’t enam­ored with I‑517.
• Eyman was paid $308,000 by Cit­i­zen Solu­tions dur­ing the sum­mer of 2012, osten­si­bly as a con­sult­ing fee. This was just the lat­est in a series of kick­back pay­ments made to Eyman by Cit­i­zen Solu­tions. The Fagans were appar­ent­ly not aware of these pay­ments or Eyman’s ongo­ing “con­sult­ing” arrangement.
• Eyman sub­se­quent­ly loaned some of his I‑1185 kick­back mon­ey to his friend Paul Jacob, who then donat­ed a near­ly iden­ti­cal sum to the I‑517 cam­paign com­mit­tee through his Cit­i­zens in Charge organization.
• Eyman did not tell Agazarm about the loan to Jacob, and Eyman claims he did­n’t know what Jacob did with the mon­ey after he loaned it. The zero-inter­est loan was not for­mal­ized with a writ­ten agree­ment, and Eyman told the PDC dur­ing his depo­si­tion he could not recall exact­ly how much of it had been paid back. The PDC sub­poe­naed his bank records to find out.
• Eyman, Agazarm, and Jacob lat­er appeared togeth­er in Olympia in Jan­u­ary of 2013 at the Sec­re­tary of State’s Elec­tions Annex to sub­mit sig­na­tures for I‑517 and speak to the media. I was present at this press conference.
• Eyman and Ruffi­no retained the ser­vices of the very same lawyer, Mark Lamb, to rep­re­sent them while answer­ing ques­tions from the PDC on July 11th, 2014. The pre­ced­ing Novem­ber, Eddie Agazarm evi­dent­ly came in with­out being accom­pa­nied by legal counsel.

Many peo­ple try to make a habit of learn­ing from their mis­takes. Tim Eyman clear­ly does­n’t. He has cho­sen, over and over and over again, to make his PDC report­ing as con­vo­lut­ed and con­fus­ing as pos­si­ble, to frus­trate those of us who are try­ing to track his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry. He delib­er­ate­ly chose to con­ceal mon­ey dur­ing the I‑517 sig­na­ture dri­ve. He has him­self to thank for the trou­ble he’s in.

The PDC’s release of its find­ings yes­ter­day led to a media field day. KING5 made the com­ple­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion its top sto­ry on the 5 PM evening news broad­cast, run­ning not one, but two seg­ments by Natal­ie Brand and Elisa Hahn.

(In the thumb­nail above, Paul Jacob can be seen stand­ing behind Eyman.)

KIRO ran its own sto­ry at 11 PM, which has­n’t been post­ed to the Web.

Every major news­pa­per in the state ran the sto­ry too, from The Seat­tle Times to the Spokesman-Review to The News Tri­bune of Taco­ma and The Her­ald of Everett.

The Times Com­pa­ny’s Wal­la-Wal­la Union Bul­letin picked up the Times sto­ry, while The Olympian and The Belling­ham Her­ald car­ried The News Tri­bune’s sto­ry (all three papers are owned by McClatchy).

Even more papers car­ried an Asso­ci­at­ed Press wire ver­sion of The News Tri­bune’s sto­ry, like the Yaki­ma Her­ald, Longview Dai­ly News, Tri-City Her­ald, and The Columbian. Broad­cast out­lets also had the AP ver­sion, from KCPQ to KXLY.

The Puget Sound Busi­ness Jour­nal felt it mer­it­ed a blog post.

Pub­lic radio’s Austin Jenk­ins filed a report for WSU’s NW News Net­work, which was also car­ried by Ore­gon Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing.

Online-only pub­li­ca­tions, from the Seat­tle P‑I to Cross­cut, had the news as well.

Here’s a look at some of the above-the-fold head­lines in this morn­ing’s papers:

Final­ly.… final­ly! Tim Eyman’s past mis­deeds are catch­ing up to him.

Eyman’s attor­ney says Eyman will not be attend­ing this Thurs­day’s enforce­ment hear­ing at Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion head­quar­ters in Olympia. But we will.

PDC staff are rec­om­mend­ing that the Com­mis­sion vote to refer the linked cas­es con­cern­ing Eyman’s extreme­ly seri­ous pub­lic dis­clo­sure law vio­la­tions to Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son for pros­e­cu­tion. The Com­mis­sion may vote to refer the mat­ter to Fer­gu­son on Thurs­day after hear­ing the staff report.