Attorney General Bob Ferguson requests that Tim Eyman be held in contempt of court

Wash­ing­ton State Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son announced today he is ask­ing courts in Sno­homish and Thurston coun­ties to hold ini­tia­tive prof­i­teer Tim Eyman and his asso­ciates in con­tempt of court for fail­ing to ful­ly com­ply with law­ful­ly-issued civ­il orders seek­ing doc­u­ments that would shed light on poten­tial vio­la­tions of Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic dis­clo­sure law.

“Despite a sub­poe­na and a court order, Tim Eyman con­tin­ues to impede this inves­ti­ga­tion,” Fer­gu­son said in a state­ment. “That’s unacceptable.”

To put an end to Eyman’s stonewalling, Fer­gu­son says he’ll ask courts to autho­rize his office to obtain the tax returns, bank state­ments, and oth­er doc­u­ments he has request­ed direct­ly from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and the banks Eyman does busi­ness with. Fer­gu­son is also ask­ing for a penal­ty of $2,000 a day to be assessed against Eyman for fail­ure to pro­duce the doc­u­ments sought in his investigation.

More specif­i­cal­ly, Fer­gu­son is ask­ing for the following:

• A penal­ty from each respon­dent of $2,000 for each day they remain in con­tempt of court;
• An order autho­riz­ing the state to issue civ­il orders to the respon­dents’ third-par­ty banks to direct­ly obtain the records sought from respondents;
• An order direct­ing respon­dents to exe­cute releas­es autho­riz­ing the state to obtain fed­er­al tax return infor­ma­tion; and
• An order award­ing the state fur­ther costs and rea­son­able attorney’s fees incurred in con­nec­tion with bring­ing this con­tempt motion.

Fer­gu­son’s motion will be heard in the near future, his office says.

This devel­op­ment is the lat­est proof that Tim Eyman con­sid­ers him­self to be above the law. He was unco­op­er­a­tive when the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion was spend­ing three years look­ing into the alle­ga­tions that led to this inves­ti­ga­tion, unco­op­er­a­tive still when the Attor­ney Gen­er­al took over the case last autumn, and still unco­op­er­a­tive even after mul­ti­ple courts issued orders com­pelling Eyman to turn over the mate­ri­als sought by Ferguson.

Why is Eyman expos­ing him­self to seri­ous lia­bil­i­ty by con­tin­u­ing to stonewall? We can only sur­mise that it is because Eyman is deeply afraid of what the evi­dence will show once Fer­gu­son’s inves­ti­ga­tors have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to exam­ine it.

Eyman’s behav­ior is the behav­ior of a man who is des­per­ate­ly try­ing to keep infor­ma­tion a secret — pre­sum­ably because it lead to his ulti­mate downfall.

We will have more on this sto­ry as it develops.