Yesterday’s arrest of a former Florida GOP chairman charged with stealing $125,000 from his party’s coffers should revive interest in an unfinished story here in Maryland. The Florida GOP chairman was indicted for paying party funds to a bogus company that allegedly didn’t do any work.
If that doesn’t sound familiar, you may have missed a report last year from WBAL-TV’s Jayne Miller uncovering $417,000 in payments from campaign accounts controlled by Bob Ehrlich and Michael Steele to Allied Berton LLC, an inactive company owned by Washington lawyer Sandy Roberts, a friend and confidant of Michael Steele who never claimed to be in any kind of campaign services business. Mr. Roberts’s website depicted his firm as a commodities trader, and no other campaign ever reported any payments to Allied Berton.
Jayne Miller reported that in the final weeks of their last campaign, Mr. Ehrlich and Mr. Steele paid $417,000 from their donors’ contributions to the mysterious Allied Berton LLC in 28 transactions from four different state and federal campaign accounts they controlled:
Bob Ehrlich for Maryland $229,000
Steele for Maryland (FEC) $64,000
Kristen Cox for Maryland $73,000
Maryland Republican Party (FEC) $50,000
Unfinished business
At the time Jayne Miller broke this story, Bob Ehrlich was not running for re-election, and the national media was just discovering the Michael Steele that Marylanders know and love, so the story never attracted the attention it deserved. That permitted Mr. Ehrlich and Mr. Steele to effectively stonewall, refusing to provide invoices, receipts, or any information explaining why they paid $417,000 of their donors’ money to an inactive company owned by a friend of Mr. Steele holding itself out to be a commodities trader, not any sort of campaign services business.
State and federal election laws prohibit campaigns committees from making payments to third parties to conceal the true recipients or purpose of expenditures, but as far as we know, the state prosecutor appointed by Mr. Ehrlich ignored evidence pointing to Mr. Ehrlich even when it was right under his nose.
Now that Mr. Ehrlich is running for re-election, he and Mr. Steele owe their donors and the public an explanation of their $417,000 in payments to Allied Berton, backed up with invoices and receipts. The denizens of the state house pit should take a lesson from their Florida colleagues, who discovered the suspicious payments last February and pursued the story until the Florida GOP chairman resigned, prosecutors investigated, and a grand jury indicted.
- Steve Lebowitz, Annapolis
follow justdafacts and fakeBobEhrlich on twitter