Why on earth did Bob Ehrlich and Michael Steele pay $417,000 of their campaign donors’ money to a commodities trading firm owned by their friend, Sandy Roberts, who has never been in any kind of campaign services business and has never been paid for any work by any other campaign?
Bob Ehrlich refused to answer yesterday when WBAL TV Baltimore’s lead investigative reporter Jayne Miller asked him about it at a news conference, deferring the question to his staff. They didn’t answer in time for Jayne Miller’s evening news report, even though this question has been kicking around since Jayne Miller first exposed the peculiar payments in February 2009.
If you think misuse of $417,000 that people donated to a campaign doesn’t matter, consider....
....that Florida’s Republican party chairman was recently indicted for paying $120,000 of donors’ money from party coffers to a bogus company that allegedly didn’t do any work.
Mr. Ehrlich and his former ticket-mate Michael Steele paid their donors' money to Allied Berton LLC in 28 transactions over the final weeks of their 2006 campaign from four state and federal accounts they controlled. Federal and state laws prohibit campaigns from concealing the true recipients of campaign funds by paying third party conduits, and of course campaigns can only use their donors’ money for legitimate campaign purposes. See the firm’s website as it appeared before and after Jayne Miller’s story broke and judge for yourself whether or not it is a legitimate enterprise.
Last year, Mr. Ehrich’s spokesman hinted the payments might have been for Ehrlich/Steele's infamous Philadelphia busing/fake ballots Election Day ploy, but when questioned yesterday by Jayne Miller, Mr. Ehrlich stopped short of acknowledging his campaign paid for the exploitative ploy.
Bob Ehrlich cannot continue to keep his donors and the public in the dark. If the Allied Berton payments were permissible campaign expenditures, he needs to prove it, preferably with invoices and receipts. If not, Bob Ehrlich and Michael Steele could be in big trouble. In the meantime, if you see Bob Ehrlich, please ask him why he and Michael Steele paid $417,000 of their donors’ money to Allied Berton.
Allied Berton's owner, the Washington lawyer Sandy Roberts, secured a lucrative do-nothing concession at state-owned Baltimore Washington International Airport (BWI) during the Ehrlich/Steele administration. Read about it here.
- Steve Lebowitz, Annapolis
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