Tim Eyman held in contempt (again) for intentionally violating court discovery orders

The price that dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman must pay for try­ing to evade account­abil­i­ty for his bla­tant and repeat­ed vio­la­tions of Wash­ing­ton’s vot­er-insti­gat­ed pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws keeps going up.

Thurston Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court Judge James Dixon today found Eyman and his now-defunct com­pa­ny “Watch­dog for Tax­pay­ers” in con­tempt for a sec­ond time, owing to Eyman’s will­ful fail­ure to com­ply with the court’s dis­cov­ery orders in the prin­ci­pal State of Wash­ing­ton v. Tim Eyman cam­paign finance enforce­ment case.

(Three oth­er con­sol­i­dat­ed cas­es against Eyman and his com­mit­tees recent­ly end­ed with a default judg­ment after Eyman neglect­ed to respond to them.)

Eyman was sup­posed to dis­close “com­plete infor­ma­tion relat­ed to hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars of pay­ments he solicit­ed from indi­vid­ual donors,” by Jan­u­ary 24th, 2019, but he failed to do so. He then blew off a sec­ond dead­line of May 31st imposed by Spe­cial Dis­cov­ery Mas­ter Gary Tabor, a retired judge.

Today’s con­tempt find­ing is in addi­tion to pre­vi­ous con­tempt find­ings for oth­er vio­la­tions. Last year, Eyman start­ed rack­ing up fines of $250 per day for fail­ing to pro­duce records. The fines were sub­se­quent­ly increased to $500 a day.

Because Eyman nev­er purged his pre­vi­ous con­tempt, he and/or his com­pa­ny have now been con­tin­u­ous­ly in con­tempt of court for mul­ti­ple dis­cov­ery vio­la­tions for five hun­dred and twen­ty-five days, accru­ing fines of $211,750.

That may sound like a lot of mon­ey, but from Eyman’s per­spec­tive, it is the regret­table cost of doing busi­ness giv­en the posi­tion he finds him­self in.

Judg­ing by his actions, Eyman is deeply per­turbed by the thought of more incrim­i­nat­ing emails, finan­cial state­ments, and oth­er records enter­ing the pub­lic domain. He has been try­ing to hold back as much as he can for as long as pos­si­ble, a legal defense strat­e­gy we’ve dubbed stonewalling in the extreme.

Going back to 2013, when the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion first began inves­ti­gat­ing the com­plaint filed by Wash­ing­to­ni­ans For Eth­i­cal Gov­ern­men­t’s Sher­ry Bock­winkel, Eyman has dragged his feet in every way pos­si­ble, hop­ing to frus­trate the State from being able to uncov­er the truth.

It has­n’t worked.

We now have proof that Eyman broke our pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws and con­spired with his asso­ciates to arrange kick­backs for him­self. Eyman had a pret­ty good con going where he raised mon­ey for ini­tia­tives, used some of that mon­ey to pay him­self a salary, and then paid him­self even more through a kick­back scheme he arranged with his prin­ci­pal ven­dor, “Cit­i­zen Solutions”.

Years ago, our team at NPI, along with Civic Ven­tures’ David Gold­stein, sus­pect­ed that this arrange­ment exist­ed, but we did not have proof that it did.

Now we have that proof, thanks to State of Wash­ing­ton v. Tim Eyman.

It was not eas­i­ly obtained.

Eyman has found Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son to be just as deter­mined to hold Eyman account­able as Eyman is des­per­ate to evade respon­si­bil­i­ty for his law­break­ing. Fer­gu­son and the attor­neys cur­rent­ly han­dling the case — Assis­tant AGs Eric New­man, Todd Sipe, and Paul Crisal­li — have been undaunt­ed by Eyman’s nev­er-end­ing attempts to delay, obfus­cate, and withhold.

“Our cam­paign finance laws demand trans­paren­cy,” Fer­gu­son said in a state­ment sent to NPI and oth­er media out­lets. “Ignor­ing mul­ti­ple court orders and refus­ing to turn over doc­u­ments in order to avoid account­abil­i­ty is unacceptable.”

Eyman has repeat­ed­ly whined in pub­lic about the dura­tion of the case, accus­ing Fer­gu­son of per­se­cut­ing him. In real­i­ty, it is Eyman who is to blame for the pace of the case. The tri­al (now expect­ed to be held next sum­mer, about a year from now) would not have had to have been resched­uled repeat­ed­ly if Eyman was not stonewalling in the extreme and vio­lat­ing court dis­cov­ery orders.

In our view, the penal­ties ought to be high­er. $2,500 a day seems a lot more appro­pri­ate giv­en Eyman’s behav­ior than $500 or $250 a day.