Tim Eyman claims he sold the family home to pay legal bills, but there’s no record of a sale

After hav­ing been wiped out by the vot­ers as a can­di­date for gov­er­nor back in the sum­mer, dis­hon­est ini­tia­tive ped­dler Tim Eyman quick­ly went back to his old habit of shak­ing his elec­tron­ic tin cup and ask­ing his fan club for mon­ey. Not for a cam­paign or a future polit­i­cal project of some sort, but for him personally.

“I real­ly need your help to sur­vive the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s per­se­cu­tion of me and my fam­i­ly,” Eyman’s post-elec­tion email pitch begins. (This is a ref­er­ence to the law­suit that Eyman is a defen­dant in, which alleges that he com­mit­ted seri­ous vio­la­tions of Wash­ing­ton State’s pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws back in the 2010s.)

Orig­i­nal­ly, Eyman’s email went on to say: “The only rea­son we’re still here is thanks to the heart­felt prayers and gen­er­ous sup­port from friends like you.”

How­ev­er, last week, an increas­ing­ly des­per­ate Eyman began using a mod­i­fied pitch that removed the line above. The new pitch goes like this:

I real­ly need your help to sur­vive the AG’s per­se­cu­tion of me and my fam­i­ly. After 8 years of inves­ti­ga­tion and lit­i­ga­tion, Fer­gu­son’s law­suit explic­it­ly asks for a life­time ban on all my future polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. That’s what it’s always been about — shut­ting down the most effec­tive tax­pay­er pro­tec­tion orga­ni­za­tion in state history.

Tax­pay­ers pay for his team of lawyers — I got­ta pay for mine — do your best — I real­ly need your help (recent­ly had to sell house in Muk­il­teo to pay my lawyers — that’s how bad this is).

Empha­sis is mine.

Ordi­nar­i­ly, when some­one states that they’ve sold their house (whether in con­ver­sa­tion or in anoth­er medi­um), they can be pre­sumed to be telling the truth. But the words above came from the key­board of Tim Eyman, for whom lying is like breath­ing. And when it comes to peo­ple like Eyman (and Trump) the “trust but ver­i­fy” prin­ci­ple does­n’t work. There is no trust, there is only verification.

Accord­ing­ly, our team at NPI looked to see if Eyman’s home had been sold.

But we could not find any evi­dence of a sale.

We checked Zil­low and Redfin and pub­lic records. Eyman’s home is nei­ther list­ed as on the mar­ket, nor shows as hav­ing passed into new own­er­ship. It remains in his and Karen’s pos­ses­sion, just as it has been since they bought it new in 1998.

Now, it could be that Eyman is plan­ning to sell the home and has­n’t done so yet.

But remem­ber his email said “recent­ly had to sell house”.

“Had to” is past tense. The impli­ca­tion is that the home is no longer in the Eyman fam­i­ly’s own­er­ship. But that’s not true. It’s a fab­ri­ca­tion. One appar­ent­ly intend­ed to secure the sym­pa­thy of Tim’s fans and get them to open their wallets.

“Recent­ly had to sell house in Muk­il­teo to pay my lawyers — that’s how bad this is” is a lot more pow­er­ful of a sales pitch than “The only rea­son we’re still here is thanks to the heart­felt prayers and gen­er­ous sup­port from friends like you.”

It is impor­tant to note that Tim Eyman’s legal and finan­cial prob­lems are entire­ly of his own mak­ing. After get­ting sued and fined by the state for vio­lat­ing pub­lic dis­clo­sure laws in 2002, Eyman could have cleaned up his act and care­ful­ly fol­lowed the law. But he did­n’t. Instead, he con­coct­ed new schemes for evad­ing pub­lic dis­clo­sure and lin­ing his own pock­ets. Rather than accept­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for his wrong­do­ing, Eyman is whin­ing about being per­se­cut­ed and ask­ing the peo­ple he already duped to bail him out… with a fresh fab­ri­ca­tion as a lure.

The con just goes on… and on… and on.