State of Washington sues Kim Wyman for public disclosure law violations

The State of Wash­ing­ton is suing Repub­li­can Sec­re­tary of State Kim Wyman for mul­ti­ple pub­lic dis­clo­sure law vio­la­tions, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son’s office announced in a news release this afternoon.

“The com­plaint alleges the Wyman cam­paign failed to time­ly file con­tri­bu­tion and expen­di­ture dis­clo­sure reports, as required under the state’s cam­paign finance laws. It also alleges that the cam­paign failed to time­ly deposit con­tri­bu­tions,” reads a news release from the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office.

Ordi­nar­i­ly, these announce­ments include a brief state­ment from the Attor­ney Gen­er­al him­self about the case, but that’s not so in this instance, owing to Fer­gu­son’s deci­sion to recuse him­self. (Fer­gu­son and Wyman are both seek­ing reelec­tion to statewide posi­tions with the back­ing of their respec­tive par­ties. Fer­gu­son was nom­i­nat­ed last month by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty for Attor­ney Gen­er­al, and Wyman is fer­vent­ly sup­port­ed for Sec­re­tary of State by the Repub­li­can Party).

The com­plaint against Wyman stems from a cit­i­zen action notice sent by the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty back in the spring. The mat­ter sub­se­quent­ly came before the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion, which investigated.

PDC staff reached the fol­low­ing con­clu­sions, as char­ac­ter­ized by the AG’s office:

Wyman filed 11 reports for the campaign’s April 2016 activ­i­ty 10 days late, dis­clos­ing $30,567 in addi­tion­al con­tri­bu­tions in May 2016. The cam­paign also filed an amend­ed cam­paign sum­ma­ry report to include the late con­tri­bu­tion dis­clo­sures, as well as $943 it had failed to account for in a pre­vi­ous report.

After staff pre­sent­ed their find­ings, the PDC vot­ed to refer the mat­ter back to the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office, since it orig­i­nat­ed as a cit­i­zen’s action.

Before that vote, com­mis­sion­ers expressed a desire to see the mat­ter be set­tled, giv­en that Wyman had par­tic­i­pat­ed in the PDC inves­ti­ga­tion and sought to take own­er­ship for her cam­paign’s report­ing failures.

How­ev­er, state’s attor­neys have decid­ed to pro­ceed to court with their case.

Since becom­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al, Bob Fer­gu­son has made enforce­ment of Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws a pri­or­i­ty, and has gone after pret­ty much every­body, from SEIU 775NW to ser­i­al offend­er Tim Eyman. Kim Wyman can hard­ly com­plain about unfair treat­ment — her cam­paign broke the law and the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s office are mov­ing to hold her accountable.

The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty’s response to the law­suit was to attack Bob Fer­gu­son, who has a Lib­er­tar­i­an oppo­nent in the gen­er­al elec­tion (not a sin­gle Repub­li­can filed to run against Ferguson):

Here are the facts:

The Wyman cam­paign trea­sur­er SELF-REPORTED to the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion (PDC) regard­ing the late fil­ing of some dona­tion reports.  The mis­takes were minor and tech­ni­cal in nature – the pub­lic was not harmed in any way. The usu­al pro­ce­dure is for the state’s PDC to han­dle and resolve such rou­tine matters.

How­ev­er, at the request of the chair­man of the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­rat Par­ty [sic], Fer­gu­son went around the PDC and filed a LAWSUIT against Kim Wyman!

This col­lu­sion with the State Democ­rats is a clear con­flict of inter­est, as Attor­ney Gen­er­al Fer­gu­son has donat­ed to, and active­ly cam­paigned for, Kim’s Demo­c­rat [sic] oppo­nent. Even though the AG has had this infor­ma­tion for months, he care­ful­ly timed his action to make head­lines right before bal­lots arrive in vot­ers’ homes.

This cyn­i­cal and par­ti­san ‘Octo­ber sur­prise’ is intend­ed by Fer­gu­son to favor Kim’s inex­pe­ri­enced left-wing opponent.

The law­suit filed by Ferguson’s office is a gross abuse of the Attor­ney General’s office, a waste of tax­pay­er mon­ey, and polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed. This is par­ti­san par­ty pol­i­tics at its worst, designed to harm Kim Wyman,who has an impec­ca­ble rep­u­ta­tion for serv­ing all cit­i­zens of the state. Call Bob Fer­gu­son at […] or email him at […] and tell him: stop the par­ti­san non­sense, stop wast­ing tax­pay­er mon­ey, stop the law­suit against Kim Wyman!

What a laugher.

News­flash to Susan Hutchi­son: Pol­i­tics is par­ti­san by its nature. Any­one who holds and defends an opin­ion or a set of val­ues is a par­ti­san. You ought to under­stand that bet­ter than most peo­ple, giv­en that you head up a polit­i­cal par­ty.

If you don’t like par­ti­san pol­i­tics — or, as you put it, par­ti­san par­ty pol­i­tics — then you’re in the wrong job. (That’s a nice point­less redun­dan­cy you’ve got there, by the way. Why use only one word when you can use two?)

After the Wyman cam­paign sound­ed a sim­i­lar note, Wash­ing­ton State Attor­ney General’s Office Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor Peter Lavallee released a stern­ly-word­ed state­ment admon­ish­ing Wyman’s cam­paign (and the WSRP by extension):

I want to set the record straight: Con­trary to any insin­u­a­tion by the Kim Wyman cam­paign, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son played no role in the deci­sion, the sub­stance or the fil­ing of today’s cam­paign-finance com­plaint. Career Attor­ney General’s Office legal staff made those calls.

The Wyman cam­paign might have missed this pas­sage in our press release:  ‘Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son is recused and has been screened from involve­ment in the matter.’

The fol­low­ing state­ment from the Wyman cam­paign is thus inac­cu­rate and high­ly mis­lead­ing, sug­gest­ing, as it does, per­son­al involve­ment by the AG: ‘I expect that the Attor­ney Gen­er­al will fol­low the PDC’s rec­om­men­da­tion to treat this as a minor vio­la­tion with exten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances, and that he is not pur­su­ing this pure­ly for polit­i­cal purposes.’

I trust the Wyman cam­paign will draw the prop­er dis­tinc­tions going forward.

Susan Hutchi­son and the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty did­n’t com­plain when Fer­gu­son’s office went after SEIU 775NW or the Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil. But now that it’s Kim Wyman who’s had a com­plaint filed against her, they’re up in arms and cry­ing foul. It cer­tain­ly seems they’re on edge about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of los­ing an office they’ve con­trolled for over fifty years.