From The Star Tribune, 10/8/05:
http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/5658126.html
Corporate money links two cases
Kevin Diaz, Star Tribune Washington Bureau Correspondent
WASHINGTON, D.C. --
A top Republican is accused of laundering illegal corporate money to
state party candidates through an arm of the Republican National
Committee (RNC).
He says he's done nothing wrong.
He accuses prosecutors of pushing a partisan Democratic vendetta.
Sounds like the saga of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of
Texas.
Except that the case is much closer to home, in Mower County in
southern Minnesota.
That's where former Minnesota GOP Chairman Ron Eibensteiner goes on
trial next month in a case that will foreshadow many of the same
politically charged accusations swirling around DeLay.
Echoes of the DeLay case reverberate throughout Eibensteiner's.
DeLay says the prosecution against him is being run by "an unabashed
partisan zealot."
Eibensteiner says his is a DFL "witch hunt."
At the heart of both cases:
Whether banned corporate money was knowingly transferred to Washington
and then bounced back through different bank accounts to improperly
influence state elections.
The cases parallel each other closely enough that they share one
crucial witness:
RNC counsel Charles Spies, who has already testified in Minnesota.
"They're essentially the same allegations," Mower County Attorney
Patrick Flanagan said, "with different smoking guns."
There is no indication that the two cases are part of a wider pattern,
and there are enough differences to prevent the outcome of one from
being useful as a prediction for the other, but both involve
allegations that unfolded in September and October of 2002.
DeLay has been indicted on felony charges by two grand juries in
Austin, Texas.
He's accused of helping funnel $190,000 in corporate contributions to
the RNC's State Elections Committee (RNSEC), which allegedly returned
the money to Texas legislative candidates in violation of state law.
Eibensteiner goes on trial in Austin, Minn., Nov. 7 on a gross
misdemeanor charge involving $15,000 in corporate contributions to the
same committee.
According to a 2003 grand jury indictment, the money found its way
back to Minnesota state races in 2002 through a $2.5 million RNSEC
disbursement to the Minnesota Republican Party.
Like Texas, Minnesota bans corporate money in state races.
Both DeLay and Eibensteiner deny any knowledge of the transactions, as
well as of any connection between the money that went to RNSEC and the
money that came back.
In Texas, DeLay has called Ronnie Earle, the Travis County prosecutor
who brought the charges, "an unabashed partisan zealot" engaging in
"personal revenge" because DeLay helped engineer the Republican
takeover of the Texas House in 2002.
The result:
A congressional redistricting plan that cost the Democrats five seats
in the U.S. House.
Eibensteiner, who was not reelected to his top state GOP Party post
this year, has called the case against him a politically motivated
"witch hunt" by DFLers, including Attorney General Mike Hatch, to even
the score for Democratic reverses in Minnesota.
In a pre-trial deposition in Eibensteiner's case, Spies, election law
counsel for the RNC, testified that the national Republican Party
keeps separate bank accounts of non-corporate donations for states
such as Texas and Minnesota, where corporate contributions are not
allowed.
These are kept separate from corporate donations, which are used in
states where they are allowed.
In a civil lawsuit stemming from the Texas case, Spies called the
mechanism for keeping separate bank accounts "perfectly legal."
Or at least it was in 2002, he said, before the passage of new federal
election law reforms.
Eibensteiner is accused of aiding and abetting illegal campaign
contributions from American Bankers Insurance Co., a Florida company
that has acknowledged it wanted to defeat Independence Party candidate
Tim Penny in the 2002 governor's race.
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They're all alike, ain't they.
Harry
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