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August 23, 2011

Another CREW Victory

By Melanie Sloan

Federal Agencies, Federal Election Commission (FEC), Republicans, States, Minnesota

Thanks to a CREW complaint, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) recently hit the Minnesota GOP with a $170,000 fine.

Back in June 2007, the Minneapolis Star Tribune uncovered a confidential memo prepared by the finance director of the Republican Party of Minnesota (RPM) the previous February, explaining that the RPM had repeatedly failed to file reports accurately disclosing its debts and obligations of at least $100,000 incurred over a period of nearly a year.

The audit resulting from CREW’s complaint showed things were even worse than we thought: the RPM actually failed to disclose nearly $1 million in debts. The RPM also had illegally transferred $560,000 between accounts.

Even now, the RPM is having trouble owning up to the misconduct, putting out a news release claiming the errors were “inadvertent” and stemmed from the “challenging reporting obligations.” This revisionist history doesn’t quite match up with the finance director’s memo, in which he said he had brought the issues to the party chairman’s attention “numerous times” since May 2006 without effect.

We don’t know what took so long, but four years after we filed our complaint, the lackadaisical FEC finally wrapped up its investigation forcing the RPM to pay one of the largest fines in the commission’s history. Given the FEC’s pathetic track record, the violations must have been particularly egregious. We’ll look forward to reading the FEC General Counsel’s report when the Commission gets around to releasing it.

In the meantime, chalk up another victory for CREW!

CREW Files FEC complaint against the MN Republican party

Read the complaint

Read the “confidential memo” from the Minnesota Republican Party