Fed up with Tim Eyman’s lying and the medi­a’s inces­sant rep­e­ti­tion of Eyman’s lies, Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al Noah Pur­cell today issued an extra­or­di­nary state­ment refut­ing Eyman’s claims that Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son’s office is sab­o­tag­ing the defense of I‑976, Eyman’s most recent con against the peo­ple of Washington.

Pur­cell has been per­son­al­ly over­see­ing the state’s defense of the mea­sure, which a sub­ma­jor­i­ty of vot­ers backed in the Novem­ber 2019 gen­er­al elec­tion. It is the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s job to defend mea­sures passed by vot­ers, even if they were dis­hon­est­ly writ­ten and laden with con­sti­tu­tion­al defects, as I‑976 is.

Eyman has base­less argued that the AGO should­n’t be defend­ing I‑976 because the office is biased against him and inca­pable of mount­ing a zeal­ous defense.

Here’s what Pur­cell had to say about Eyman’s fab­ri­ca­tions today.

Mr. Eyman claims that the non­par­ti­san, career attor­neys in our Office who wrote the bal­lot title for I‑976 inten­tion­al­ly includ­ed lan­guage that would cause it to be struck down. The claim is ridiculous.

The lan­guage in the bal­lot title that the judge found poten­tial­ly mis­lead­ing was a direct quote from the ini­tia­tive, which Mr. Eyman wrote. And Mr. Eyman specif­i­cal­ly argued for that lan­guage to be includ­ed in the title, as shown in the attached 2018 court filing.

It is aston­ish­ing that he can claim with a straight face that our Office sab­o­taged the Ini­tia­tive by includ­ing in the title lan­guage that he wrote and that he argued should be included.

Mr. Eyman claims that the Attor­ney General’s Office is oppos­ing Pierce County’s attempt to inter­vene in the case. That is a lie. We did not and will not oppose their effort to inter­vene, and we have told Pierce County’s attor­neys that. We look for­ward to work­ing with them.

Mr. Eyman says we are sab­o­tag­ing defense of the ini­tia­tive because he sent us ideas for argu­ments to include in our brief­ing and we didn’t make them. But we researched every argu­ment he sent us, and they were ter­ri­ble arguments.

For exam­ple, he sug­gest­ed that we argue that the plain­tiffs should have to “post a bond” in order to obtain a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion, but court rules and mul­ti­ple deci­sions from our state Supreme Court make clear that gov­ern­ment agen­cies (like Seat­tle or King Coun­ty) do not need to post a bond to seek an injunction.

We will not apol­o­gize for refus­ing to make bad arguments.

Mr. Eyman says it is uneth­i­cal for the Attor­ney General’s Office to defend Ini­tia­tive 976 while sep­a­rate­ly suing him for vio­lat­ing Washington’s cam­paign finance laws.

As his own attor­neys admit­ted in their briefs, that is untrue.

They wrote:

“While the AG pur­su­ing PDC legal claims against the spon­sor of a bal­lot ini­tia­tive that it is defend­ing on behalf of Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers may appear at first glance to be a con­flict of inter­est, it is not.”

Final­ly, Mr. Eyman says there are var­i­ous argu­ments we should have made and things we should have done.

He is wrong about that. Mr. Eyman is not an attorney.

Our attor­neys reviewed every one of Mr. Eyman’s sug­ges­tions, but they were all deeply flawed.

Even if he had a point, he could have inter­vened in this case three weeks ago to make what­ev­er argu­ments he want­ed instead of wait­ing to inter­vene until now. While our attor­neys were work­ing long hours to defend I‑976, some­times until 3 or 4 in the morn­ing, and tak­ing time away from their fam­i­lies over Thanks­giv­ing, Mr. Eyman was spend­ing his time on TV crit­i­ciz­ing them.

If he thinks there were bet­ter argu­ments to make, he could have made them him­self. He chose to focus on get­ting media atten­tion instead.

Get­ting media atten­tion and part­ing fools from their mon­ey are Tim Eyman’s only real skills as a politi­cian, so it’s under­stand­able that Eyman relent­less­ly seeks media cov­er­age. What’s not so easy to under­stand is why tele­vi­sion sta­tions like KING5 con­tin­ue to air Eyman’s lies unchal­lenged on their broadcasts.

Eyman is bet­ter at manip­u­lat­ing the media than any oth­er polit­i­cal fig­ure that I can think of, with the notable excep­tion of Don­ald Trump, who Eyman idolizes.

(Birds of a feath­er flock togeth­er, as the say­ing goes.)

Tim Eyman is often described by reporters as a full time pro­fes­sion­al spon­sor of ini­tia­tives, or an “ini­tia­tive king”, when in real­i­ty, Eyman is total­ly incom­pe­tent at writ­ing ini­tia­tives that can with­stand con­sti­tu­tion­al scruti­ny. You might think after twen­ty years he’d have learned how. But he does­n’t care, because his true occu­pa­tion is scam­ming peo­ple. Ini­tia­tives are a means to an end for him.

What hap­pens to Eyman’s ini­tia­tives after they qual­i­fy is ulti­mate­ly not impor­tant. After all, if a mea­sure gets struck down, Eyman can just run that same con again in a cou­ple years. Rinse and repeat. Being able to run the cons year after year is what is impor­tant. Once you under­stand this fact, it will not seem strange that Eyman likes to brags about hav­ing won just by qual­i­fy­ing some­thing to the bal­lot and forc­ing a pub­lic vote on it. What he is real­ly cel­e­brat­ing is that he’s still in busi­ness as a scam­mer and a con artist despite all the evi­dence that he is a scammer.

There are many scam­mers in this world… dis­hon­est peo­ple who are up to no good and would like your mon­ey, as much as they can pos­si­bly get their hands on.

For instance, there are peo­ple run­ning Win­dows tech­ni­cal sup­port scams over the phone, peo­ple run­ning email phish­ing scams, and peo­ple run­ning door-to-door sales scams. Eyman spe­cial­izes in polit­i­cal scams that typ­i­cal­ly take the form of ini­tia­tives intend­ed to defund pub­lic ser­vices. He also spe­cial­izes in being a dis­rup­tive, rules-flout­ing nui­sance at pub­lic hear­ings and meetings.

The media can’t seem to get enough of Eyman, and he knows it.

Before Eyman walked into the Sec­re­tary of State’s office to declare his can­di­da­cy for gov­er­nor a cou­ple weeks ago, he remarked to the friend who was fol­low­ing him (smart­phone in hand and ready to record), that it was time to get on with “the dog and pony show”. Those were his words: “dog and pony show”.

Eyman absolute­ly loathes peo­ple who get in his way and frus­trate his abil­i­ty to per­pe­trate cons against the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton State. That is why he con­temp­tu­ous­ly refers to Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son as “Fas­cist Fer­gie”, and it’s why he is accus­ing Fer­gu­son’s office of sab­o­tag­ing the defense of I‑976.

Eyman would love noth­ing more than to dimin­ish Fer­gu­son’s cred­i­bil­i­ty with Wash­ing­to­ni­ans, and I sus­pect that’s why he con­tin­ues to lev­el dai­ly broad­sides against Fer­gu­son and the attor­neys tasked with defend­ing Ini­tia­tive 976, includ­ing  Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al Noah Pur­cell, who is wide­ly respect­ed and well regarded.

Eyman’s grasp of the law is extreme­ly poor, but that isn’t stop­ping him from play­ing arm­chair legal strate­gist and gen­er­at­ing cri­tiques of Pur­cel­l’s every move that are intend­ed to be fod­der for night­ly news seg­ments about I‑976.