Dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er and ser­i­al law­break­er Tim Eyman was hit with what he called “a gut punch” this morn­ing when Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge James Dixon denied his motion to pre­vent the State of Wash­ing­ton from con­tin­u­ing to seek injunc­tive relief per­ma­nent­ly bar­ring him from man­ag­ing or con­trol­ling the finances of a polit­i­cal committee.

It’s the lat­est chap­ter in a saga that stretch­es back sev­en years, when this orga­ni­za­tion and oth­er Eyman foes sus­pect­ed that Eyman was using mon­ey raised for one ini­tia­tive (I‑1185) to qual­i­fy a sec­ond, unre­lat­ed ini­tia­tive (I‑517).

A com­plaint over Eyman’s ille­gal behav­ior led to a mul­ti­year inves­ti­ga­tion by the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion, which was then trans­ferred to Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son’s office. In March of 2017, the inves­ti­ga­tion became a cam­paign finance action in Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court, with Fer­gu­son announc­ing he would seek to put an end to Eyman’s end­less self-serv­ing finan­cial schemes.

Dixon’s deci­sion pre­serves the sta­tus quo, leav­ing Bob Fer­gu­son’s orig­i­nal Prayer for Relief unchanged. (In law, the Prayer for Relief is the por­tion of a com­plaint that spells out what the plain­tiff would like the court to do.)

This is the part of the Prayer for Relief Eyman want­ed thrown out:

WHEREFORE, Plain­tiff requests the fol­low­ing relief as pro­vid­ed by law: […] 6.3. For tem­po­rary and per­ma­nent injunc­tive relief, as autho­rized by RCW 42.17A.750(1)(h), includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to bar­ring Defen­dant Eyman from man­ag­ing, con­trol­ling, nego­ti­at­ing, or direct­ing finan­cial trans­ac­tions of any kind for any polit­i­cal com­mit­tee in the future;

Eyman con­tends that mon­ey is speech and that there­fore, he can­not be pro­hib­it­ed from con­trol­ling the finances of a polit­i­cal committee.

Believ­ing him­self to be on the verge of suc­ceed­ing in sig­nif­i­cant­ly weak­en­ing the State’s case against him, Eyman had aggres­sive­ly pro­mot­ed the hear­ing, invit­ing his fol­low­ers to attend and send­ing out the link to TVW’s planned video archive of the event to the press. He even com­pared the hear­ing to the Super Bowl.

By his own admis­sion, Eyman had con­vinced him­self that Dixon would rule in his favor, lament­ing: “I couldn’t con­ceive of how this could not go my direction.”

Dixon stressed that he was only mak­ing a pro­ce­dur­al rul­ing, not deter­min­ing whether the State’s request­ed relief would actu­al­ly be granted.

“This Court will not and can­not rule on what the Court might do in the event the court finds the state has car­ried its bur­den,” Dixon told Eyman from the bench.

After­wards, out­side the Thurston Coun­ty Cour­t­house, a deject­ed Eyman record­ed a short video let­ting his fol­low­ers know that he had lost his motion.

There are still many months to go until the tri­al is sched­uled to take place. It has been a lit­tle over two years since Fer­gu­son filed State of Wash­ing­ton v. Tim Eyman; the case has dragged on at a snail’s pace due to Eyman’s stonewalling and refusal to com­ply with law­ful dis­cov­ery motions. Eyman has repeat­ed­ly been held in con­tempt for not turn­ing over records sought by the State.

Eyman has tried what seems like every con­ceiv­able tac­tic to stall Fer­gu­son’s law­suit. He has ignored court orders to pro­duce records and doc­u­ments, repeat­ed­ly changed attor­neys, and even filed for bank­rupt­cy at the fed­er­al lev­el to secure an auto­mat­ic stay of pro­ceed­ings. But Fer­gu­son, who is a dis­ci­plined and patient law­man, has per­sist­ed in seek­ing to hold Eyman accountable.

Slow­ly but sure­ly, state attor­neys have been amass­ing the evi­dence need­ed to prove Fer­gu­son’s alle­ga­tions against Eyman, which stem from a com­plaint filed by Sher­ry Bock­winkel of Wash­ing­to­ni­ans For Eth­i­cal Government.

Some of that evi­dence was pre­viewed in the State’s response to Eyman’s motion for par­tial sum­ma­ry judg­ment, includ­ing email com­mu­ni­ca­tions between Eyman and asso­ciates which demon­strate that Eyman was ille­gal­ly fun­nel­ing mon­ey for both his per­son­al use and cam­paign use through “Cit­i­zens in Charge”, a 501(c)(3) char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion con­trolled by his friend Paul Jacob.