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.
