Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed complaints with the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against newly-minted Delaware senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell (R) for using campaign funds for personal living expenses. By misusing campaign funds, Ms. O’Donnell committed the crime of conversion; by lying about her expenditures on forms she filed with the FEC, she committed false statements; and by failing to include the campaign funds she misappropriated as income, she committed tax evasion.
“Christine O’Donnell is clearly a criminal, and like any crook she should be prosecuted,” said Melanie Sloan, CREW Executive Director. “Ms. O’Donnell has spent years embezzling money from her campaign to cover her personal expenses. Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on much these days, but both sides should agree on one point: thieves belong in jail not the United States Senate.”
CREW says it has an affidavit from David Keegan, a former campaign worker, who witnessed O’Donnell misusing campaign donations by using the funds to pay her rent as well as for meal, gas and even bowling.
On the eve of the Delaware primary on Tueday, Sept. 14, the Delaware Republican Party released a robocall featuring a former O’Donnell campaign manager, who also charged that O’Donnell had misused campaign funds:
KRISTIN MURRAY: This is Kristin Murray. In 2008, I was the campaign manager for Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell. I got into politics because I believe in conservative values and wanted to make a difference. But I was shocked to learn that O’Donnell is no conservative.
You see, this is her third Senate race in five years. As O’Donnell’s manager, I found out she was living on campaign donations — using them for rent and personal expenses, while leaving her workers unpaid and piling up thousands in debt.
As CREW noted in its news alert about the filing, none of this “is surprising given that Ms. O’Donnell has not held a steady job or had a discernible source of income for many years.”
On Saturday, less than 24 hours after CREW’s announcement, O’Donnell abruptly canceled appearances on Sunday political talk shows on both CBS and Fox, the GOP’s in-house network. Media outlets inside the Beltway continue to suggest that she canceled to avoid having to discuss comments she made in 1999 about a high school dalliance with witchcraft.
But the witchcraft comment is easy to brush off — she could simply say something similar to what George W. Bush said during the 2000 campaign when asked about his cocaine use: When I was young and foolish, I did foolish things, or words to that effect.
It seems much more likely that she has been advised by attorneys not to risk being asked to make any statements about the embezzlement allegations — even though at this point, the media seems to be going out of its way to bring these charges up. If so, it will be interesting to see if she can manage to avoid taking questions from nonpartisan reporters for the rest of the campaign. It is certainly possible — other tea bagger candidates like Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky are managing quite well by avoiding serious questions.
CREW filed its complaint with the office of U.S. Attorney David C. Weiss, in Delaware. Weiss was appointed by George Bush in Feb. 2007. He also served as an assistant U.S. attorney under Pres. George Bush Sr. In its news release, CREW said it had asked the Federal Election Commission to “conduct a full audit of all of Ms. O’Donnell’s campaign expenses to learn the full extent of Ms. O’Donnell’s thievery.”
CREW is a nonpartisan ethics watchdog group that has targeted Democratic Reps. Charlie Rangel of New York and Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, as well as Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Sen. John Ensign of Nevada.
Jon Ponder – CREW is as leftist as you can get, and you, by referring to Sharron Angle and Rand Paul as “teabaggers”, are an asswipe.
Hey Bob – I love it when people allied with the tea party mobs come on here and complain about name calling. Wasn’t it just a few years ago that right wingers used to sneer at political correctness and ridicule people who wallowed in their victimhood?
Here’s the deal: If tea baggers don’t like name calling, they should stop calling people names like socialist, Muslim, fascist and Nazi, especially when none of that is true. If you can’t take the name calling, don’t dish it out.
As a leftist, I’d welcome CREW on our side. But they are, in fact, nonpartisan. In just the last year or so, they’ve taken on Charlie Rangel, Maxine Waters and Jessie Jackson Jr. No “leftist” group would have done that. (There are also Dems on CREW’s list of most crooked candidates along with Christine O’Donnell.)
I know facts don’t matter to right wingers, but there are at least two eyewitnesses, former O’Donnell staffers, who say they have firsthand knowledge that Christine O’Donnell stole campaign funds. And it’s not just leftists who see O’Donnell for the sleazebag she is. The robocall featuring her ex-campaign manager warning Delaware’s Republican voters that O’Donnell was corrupt was paid for by the Delaware Republican Party.
Do tea baggers consider them to be leftists too?
The only tea baggers that I know of is Anderson Cooper. He actually has first hand experience and that is saying a mouthful.
Jon your a moron, calling a socialist a socialist isn’t name calling. There is no inference to a sexual slur there.
The truth is Timothy Geitner is still employed and was confirmed after not paying taxes along with other employees of the Obama administration. Has CREW filed so that we may rid ourselves of these criminals? How about an investigation of that loan from Tony Rezko? O’Donnel is going to lose according to everyone, why all the piling on.
How about we get back to the sitting members of congress like Rangel Reid and Waters?
Africanus – I understand you are desperate to change the subject — but name-calling and exposing your tea-bagger bigotry doesn’t change the fact that Republicans in Delaware say Sarah Palin’s Mini-Me is a embezzler and a fraud who stole money from her own campaign coffers. It’s obvious she is guilty. Why else would she not appear on Fox, her own party’s propaganda channel?
But if you don’t like being called tea baggers, blame yourselves and your leaders. It was tea baggers who showed up rallies in Feb. 2009 wearing tea bags stapled to their hats. It was tea baggers who said in the media, “Tea bag Congress!” “Tea bag the White House.”
Your whole movement is a con — but the con isn’t against normal Americans, it’s against the tea baggers themselves. Tea baggery is led by Republican operatives like Dick Armey and Sal Russo, funded with millions of dollars from the Koch brothers. Their goal is to convince a bunch of racist half-wits that they are attacking the government and the African-American president, when in fact what’s really going on is that you are helping preserve government handouts to energy and health care industries, among others, in the form of profits and tax break. The Koch brothers, Armey and Russo and the rest are repaying you for your help by shipping your jobs overseas.
The old frat boys like Dick Armey sure as hell knew that “tea bagging” had another meaning. The Koch brothers are paying him $500,000 a year to play you guys like fools. If you have a problem with the “tea bagger” brand, take it up with him, not your critics.
And btw, Harry Reid is not under investigation. Your guy is: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. It’s likely that if the GOP-tea bagger party takes over the Senate, one of the first orders of business will be an investigation into his corruption. (And you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about with Rangel and Waters. Their hearings are scheduled.)
Jon,
When do any of the tea party supporters EVER understand ANYTHING? They are being hoodwinked big time. The entire movement is a scam perpetrated against them by a small group of interrelated rich individuals whose goals are NOT the same as those of the tea party supporters. They are being manipulated through the use of catch phrases to vote against their own interests. For a group of people who scream about the future of their children, they’re not really as concerned about that as they say they are. By the time the Koch Bros, Armey, Russo, Palin, Gingrich, Murdoch, Ailes, etc are finished with them, the country will be in worse shape than it already is, and there will be no future for anyone. The environment will be in shambles, climate change will be wreaking havoc on the planet, they will be working harder than ever just to keep their heads above water, and corporatists will be running the government. I’ve never seen so many people willing to turn their futures over to Big Business and Big Oil in all of my 57 years. Armey and the others don’t care anything about the tea party members, and they don’t have to. They can celebrate on November 3 about their successful campaign to increase their control over our government. When it happens, their peons will do exactly what they’re doing at the present time: be reactive instead of proactive and disavow all responsibility for the predicament they’ll find themselves in. They have absolved themselves and GWB of all blame for the mess we’re in now. I’ve seen this pattern repeat itself among “conservatives” since I cast my first vote in 1972.
It’s been documented more times than I can count that facts don’t matter to some conservatives because they write their own versions of events. Obama is the source of all of their problems, not the two wars, deregulation, the supplemental budgets to fund them, or the GWB tax cuts. None of this ever happened in their version of reality. And they sure do love to hate for a group that constantly flaunts it’s “c”hristianity.
teabaggers = shitbaggers = teabuggers = teabuggerers = repukes