Add another piece to the Michele Bachmann ethics investigation: Did she break ethics rules or election laws by
blurring the lines between her failed 2012 presidential campaign and her failed book tour? Candidates aren't allowed to use their campaigns to promote their books or other business ventures, but Bachmann campaign staffers attended dozens of book events. Bachmann's lawyer insists that everything was kept "separate and distinct" and campaign staff attended book events just in case they had to talk campaign business with her.
Yet internal e-mails obtained by the newspaper appear to show that top campaign advisers were intimately involved in the promotional details. One, written by campaign fundraiser Guy Short, suggested using Bachmann’s list of Iowa supporters to boost attendance at her book events: “Can we push people to these events through IA (Iowa) emails?” he wrote on Nov. 25 to campaign strategist Rebecca Donatelli.
Another e-mail, written the same day by Iowa campaign manager Eric Woolson, noted that the tour’s first Iowa stop in Mason City was a “disaster.” He urged in all caps, “WE NEED BODIES AT THESE EVENTS TODAY and TOMORROW!”
I'm sure if you were watching your campaign go down in flames, the public embarrassment of having almost no one show up at your book events would seem like a campaign issue. But legally and ethically? They have to be separate. Legal and ethical appear to be concepts the Bachmann campaign had a whole lot of trouble with, though, from
stealing a home-schooling group's email list to
under-the-table payments and
using money from her PAC for her presidential campaign. We're talking about so many allegations it's all a little difficult to keep track of, frankly. But with her former aides dishing so gleefully to the press, the Office of Congressional Ethics really shouldn't have much trouble getting to the bottom of it.