California FPPC suggests money laundering fines for three GOP committees
Three Republican central committees in California have agreed to pay fines for laundering money during the 2010 election, the Fair Political Practices Commission announced Monday.
The states political watchdog has proposed fines of $5,000 each for the Yolo County and Santa Clara County Republican central committees for failing to report their role as intermediaries to funnel money from Ann and Charles Johnson an owner of the San Francisco Giants to Damon Dunn, the Republican candidate for secretary of state in 2010.
The FPPC also proposed a $15,000 fine for the Republican Central Committee of Los Angeles County for acting as an intermediary in sending money from Paul Anthony Novelly chief executive of Apex Oil in St. Louis and his family to a 2010 Republican candidate for California Senate, Rabbi Nachum Shifren.
In all three cases, according to the FPPC, the donors had given the maximum allowable contributions to the candidates they supported, but wanted to contribute more. So they worked with campaign consultants to contribute money to the central committees, which in turn donated almost the same amounts to the candidates, the FPPC documents say.
That violates state law because donations to political parties are not supposed to be earmarked for specific candidates. The FPPC has found similar violations in the past involving Republican central committees moving money to support state Sens. Tom Berryhill and Joel Anderson. Its a pattern that likely results from limits California voters put on campaign fundraising when they approved Proposition 34 in 2000. That measure limits the amount donors can contribute to specific candidates, but allows unlimited donations to political parties as long as they are not designated for specific candidates.
In the cases involving Dunn, the secretary of state candidate, the FPPC found that Dunns political consultant Matt Rexroad and political fundraiser Michael Sowers played key roles in orchestrating the contributions from the Johnsons to the central committees, and then on to the Dunn campaign.
The FPPC reviewed emails, text messages and phone records that show how the two men coordinated the plan: Sowers asked the Johnsons adult daughter to support Dunn by contributing to the central committees, and Rexroad communicated with the central committees to ask that the money come back to his client. Rexroad sent an employee to pick up the checks from Johnsons San Mateo office and deliver them to the central committees, an FPPC documents says, and sent an email to the central committees chairmen with instructions on wiring the money to the Dunn campaign.
The Johnsons ended up giving $34,000 to each central committee. The Santa Clara committee later gave $33,000 to Dunns campaign and the Yolo committee gave about $32,300. A third committee that is not being fined by the FPPC the Placer County Republican Central Committee also received a donation from the Johnsons that the FPPC says was targeted to support Dunn. The Placer County group refunded the Johnsons money, calling the transaction tainted, according to an FPPC document.
In an interview Monday, Rexroad said he did nothing wrong by asking the central committees to support his candidate.
You can ask and request, but in the end they get to decide, he said. The central committees chose to give out of their own volition. They could have chosen to give to any candidate they wanted to it was entirely within their control.
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California FPPC suggests money laundering fines for three GOP committees