fusaro, dennis

<article id="post-1222" class="hnews item post-1222 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail hentry category-campaign-spending category-corruption category-elections category-government category-news category-politics tag-2008-gop-primary tag-2010-gop-primary tag-2012-gop-primary tag-allison-lefer tag-american-tradition-partnership tag-art-wittich tag-atp tag-campaign-finance tag-christian-lefer tag-citizens-united tag-dimitri-kesari tag-direct-mail-and-communications tag-jedd-coburn tag-jonathan-motl tag-montana-citizens-for-right-to-work tag-national-right-to-work-committee tag-smart-simple-campaigns tag-western-tradition-partnership tag-wtp top-term-post_tag-2008-gop-primary featured-media featured-media-image" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article" style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><section class="entry-content clearfix" itemprop="articleBody" style="margin-bottom: 24px; padding: 0px 278.203px;">=mojo...LeFer was a key cog in the right-to-work movement. Internal NRTWC emails depict him as the committee’s man on the ground in Montana, where, in addition to Western Tradition Partnership, he ran Montana Citizens for Right to Work. NRTWC funded LeFer’s group to the tune of <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1684026/national-right-to-work-committee-2010-form-990.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAI5WMXH27O6KH3ALA&Expires=1426201286&Signature=f9AwEHU85vGrKLPcFhf7%2F16lN5E%3D" target="blank" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">$217,600 in 2010 </a>and <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1684301-national-right-to-work-committee-2011-form-990.html#document/p21/a207240" target="blank" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">$56,500 in 2011</a>, tax records show. After the meth house documents came to light, LeFer and his wife, Allison, sued to reclaim them, but a state judge <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/805334/2013-10-16-lefer-order-doc-no-61.pdf" target="blank" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">dismissed their suit in October 2013</a>, and the documents remained in the hands of a federal grand jury investigating Western Tradition Partnership.Two thousand miles away, at his home in rural Virginia, a former NRTWC staffer and Ron Paul aide named Dennis Fusaro watched the drama unfolding in Montana with growing alarm. Fusaro knew all too well who LeFer was—in 2009 and 2010, Fusaro worked for NRTWC in Iowa and had been included on many email chains with LeFer. He feared the Montana investigation could spark a probe of NRTWC activities. Fusaro says he tried to bring his complaints to NRTWC leadership, but was rebuffed. (NRTWC did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)So, in what Fusaro says was an effort to save his own skin, he went public, eventually releasing to conservative bloggers a trove of emails, memos, and other records showing potentially illegal coordination between the NRTWC and a host of GOP candidates. But the biggest bombshell he dropped had to do with Kent Sorenson, whom Fusaro knew well from his days as an NRTWC operative in Iowa. Fusaro had been included on Paul campaign correspondence about securing Sorenson’s endorsement. Attached to one of those emails was the three-page memo outlining Sorenson’s demands for joining Ron Paul’s presidential campaign; its publication in August 2013 fueled the criminal investigation that eventually brought Sorenson down.Fusaro’s documents also laid bare how NRTWC may have overstepped the rules banning outside groups from coordinating with political candidates. (We’ll spare you the legalese, but coordination is a campaign finance no-no because it provides a way to circumvent contribution limits to political campaigns.) Fusaro’s documents show NRTWC was involved in creating and sending out mailers on behalf of dozens of Republican candidates for the Iowa Legislature in 2010. Mailers ostensibly authored by candidates or their spouses were written on NRTWC computers and later approved by the candidates. In some cases, candidates instructed NRTWC on the mix of Republican and independent voters that should receive their mailers. Helping oversee this NRTWC mail program were two Paul World fixtures: Doug Stafford and Dimitri Kesari. (Stafford, emails obtained by Mother Jones show, also worked on Rand Paul’s 2010 Senate campaign while he was an NRTWC employee. Stafford declined to comment.)Not only did Fusaro’s documents show evidence of coordination, but on their 2010 tax forms NRTWC and a Midwestern affiliate told the IRS they didn’t plan to get involved in any political work that year. Marcus Owens, a tax lawyer who from 1990 to 2000 ran the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups, says that filing false tax reports “could not only be a civil problem but a criminal one.”While it is unclear whether Fusaro’s documents have prompted IRS scrutiny of NRTWC, they caused a world of hurt for Kent Sorenson. Nearly three years after his dramatic switch to the Ron Paul campaign, Sorenson pleaded guilty to covering up payments from both the Paul and Bachmann campaigns—her campaign was secretly paying him as well—and to obstructing an investigation into the payments. Sorenson never ultimately cashed Kesari’s jewelry store check, but he admitted to receiving payments totaling $73,000, which an <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1684033-kent-sorenson-iowa-ethics-investigation-report.html" target="blank" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">Iowa Senate ethics investigation</a> all but concluded came from the Paul campaign.Had the Sorenson saga ended there, Rand Paul and his presidential team could probably breathe easy. But on February 19, a Justice Department lawyer requested a delay in sentencing Sorenson because the feds were<a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2015/02/investigation-into-ron-pauls-2012-campaign-expanding/" target="blank" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");"> “making progress”</a> on a “larger investigation” into the scandal. This prompted conservative radio host Steve Deace to <a href="https://twitter.com/stevedeaceshow/status/568516881633538049" target="blank" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">tweet</a>: “Asteroid coming. Impact could produce potentially large blast radius.” The DOJ did not say who else was in its crosshairs, but emails and internal documents show that Benton and Kesari both played roles in the deal. Sorenson, for his part, isn’t holding anything back. “He’s cooperating and answering their questions about all the information that he knows,” says F. Montgomery Brown, Sorenson’s attorney.In the meantime, Paul World has lawyered up. Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign has shelled out $364,000 in legal fees since August. Reached on his cellphone, Kesari said he wouldn’t comment and hung up; Benton and his lawyer did not respond to repeated interview requests. At least publicly, Rand Paul has said little to suggest he’s worried about the legal headaches that may ensnare Paul World fixtures. In December—before the Justice Department’s latest announcement but after emails showed Jesse Benton’s involvement in the Sorenson deal, prompting Benton’s resignation as Sen. Mitch McConnell’s 2014 campaign manager—Paul <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/226478-paul-jesse-benton-will-help-us-in-2016" target="_blank" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("");">defended Benton to the Hill</a> newspaper as an “honest” political operative who would be “welcome” on his 2016 team. “He’ll help us,” Paul said.<div class="incontent-promo" id="incontent_promo_7" style="font-size: medium; text-align: center; box-sizing: inherit; background: rgb(242, 243, 239); position: relative; left: -358.156px; height: auto; width: 100vw; margin-bottom: 1rem; clear: both;"><section id="mj-incontent-ad-widget-9" class="widget mj-incontent-ad-widget" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="incontent-ad-container" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 1300px; margin: 0px auto; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px;" /></section></div><div class="mj-floating-ad-wrapper" style="font-size: medium; text-align: center; box-sizing: inherit; min-height: 282px; right: calc(0px + 6rem); position: absolute; height: 617.313px;">But as Rand Paul launches his presidential campaign, questions linger about how long his cadre of advisers and operatives will last under the merciless glare of the national stage. “They are in such a bubble in this Rand Paul universe, and I think the bubble’s going to pop real quick in the heat of the primaries,” says the conservative strategist familiar with the Pauls and their allies. “They are not ready for prime time.”</div>=HELENA – Thousands of newly uncovered documents and recently filed court records bolster the already mounting evidence tying the anti-union<a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiskv_cvcjKAhXCkQ8KHWrrA5IQFggpMAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnrtwc.org%2F&usg=AFQjCNEtxHcoY5xlKYXH9kQf8guj_IRfZw&sig2=WbHesVP0UpX5BxMfivN_dw" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"> National Right to Work Committee</a> to the political activities of conservative nonprofit groups <a href="http://missoulian.com/news/local/american-tradition-partnership-documents-suggest-illegal-coordination-with-gop/article_6c20c00e-223a-11e2-87db-001a4bcf887a.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">accused of improperly coordinating </a>Republican legislative primary campaigns in Montana.Emails, documents, and affidavits recently obtained by Montana’s <a href="http://www.politicalpractices.mt.gov/default.mcpx" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">commissioner of political practices</a> paint a detailed picture of how the national anti-union group oversaw the activities of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Tradition_Partnership" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">American Tradition Partnership</a>, the group at the center of allegations of illegal third-party influence in Montana Republican primary campaigns in 2008, 2010, and 2012.The National Right to Work Committee is a 501(c)4 “social welfare” group that, <a href="https://www.irs.gov/Charities-%26-Non-Profits/Other-Non-Profits/Social-Welfare-Organizations" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">according to the IRS</a>, is not supposed to engage in “direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.”<aside class="scaip scaip-1">Tens of thousands of pages of emails obtained by Montana Commissioner of Political Practices Jonathan Motl show a link between top NRTWC officials and political campaign activities in Montana.A former NRTWC employee said in a sworn affidavit filed in Helena District Court that NRTWC staff was relocated to Montana to work on the 2010 primary campaign and their work was overseen by the political director of the national organization, Dimitri Kesari. Emails provided to Motl show that National Right to Work executive director Jedd Coburn was in regular communication with the groups doing political work in Montana and provided text for candidates’ campaign materials.Motl said this latest trove of information is significant because it proves ATP was not acting as independent issue advocacy organizations, as the groups claimed, but were instead part of a massive, coordinated campaign machine funded by an out-of state organization with the goal of changing the make-up of the Montana Legislature.<aside class="scaip scaip-2"><div id="attachment_1228" class="wp-caption module image alignleft" style="margin: 6px 20px 12px 0px; float: left; max-width: 488px;">Christian LeFer as he appears on his Twitter profile.</div>“Christian LeFer was here as a field operative for National Right to Work. Once you get there, then National Right to Work’s central role is more apparent,” Motl said. “I don’t think you can underestimate the significance, or the threat, that a coordinated, funded, centralized corporate-take-over of candidates poses (to elections).”Motl said in 2008, when Western Tradition Partnership first emerged on the scene in Montana, and in 2010 when the group changed its name to American Tradition Partnership, most people, including a previous commissioner of political practices, believed the group was an independent entity.“You can see from looking at all of these documents that it wasn’t,” Motl said.A spokesman for the National Right to Work Committee did not return multiple phone calls or emails seeking comment for this story. Christian LeFer, who was the director of Montana Citizens for Right to work and ran two political nonprofits in Montana, also did not respond to email inquiries.According to a <a href="http://soprweb.senate.gov/index.cfm?event=selectfields" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">U.S. Senate lobbying disclosure database</a>, NRTWC spent more than $42 million between 1999 and 2016 lobbying the Senate to pass a national “Right to Work” bill. Dimitri Kesari was one of the group’s top lobbyists in Washington, D.C., during most of that period. Montana is one of the few Western states without a “right-to-work” law. Such laws prohibit labor unions from requiring employees to join the union or pay dues as a condition of employment.LeFer’s Montana nonprofit group Western Tradition Partnership made national headlines in 2012 when <a href="http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/big-sky-big-money/story/documents-found-meth-house-bare-inner-workings-dar/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Frontline and ProPublica reported about boxes of documents</a> that revealed how the organization coordinated with Republican legislative candidates.<div id="attachment_1246" class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="margin: 6px 0px 12px 20px; float: right; max-width: 353px;"><img data-attachment-id="1246" data-permalink="https://montanafreepress.org/documents-detail-right-to-works-involvement-in-montana-elections/wtp_atp/" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/montanafreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/WTP_ATP.jpg?fit=407%2C309&ssl=1" data-orig-size="407,309" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{" aperture="aperture" credit="credit" camera="camera" caption="caption" created_timestamp="created_timestamp" copyright="copyright" focal_length="focal_length" iso="iso" shutter_speed="shutter_speed" title="title" orientation="orientation" data-image-title="WTP_ATP" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/montanafreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/WTP_ATP.jpg?fit=300%2C228&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/montanafreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/WTP_ATP.jpg?fit=407%2C309&ssl=1" class="wp-image-1246 jetpack-lazy-image jetpack-lazy-image--handled" src="https://i1.wp.com/montanafreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/WTP_ATP.jpg?resize=353%2C268" alt="WTP_ATP" width="353" height="268" data-recalc-dims="1" data-lazy-loaded="1" srcset="https://i1.wp.com/montanafreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/WTP_ATP.jpg?w=407&ssl=1 407w, https://i1.wp.com/montanafreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/WTP_ATP.jpg?resize=300%2C228&ssl=1 300w" sizes="(max-width: 353px) 100vw, 353px" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; max-width: 100%; height: auto; clear: both; display: block;" />Western Tradition Partnership in 2010 changed its name to American Tradition Partnership.</div>WTP is also the group that <a href="http://electionlawblog.org/wp-content/uploads/MT-expenditures-decision.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">successfully sued the state in 2011</a> and eventually <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2012/0625/Supreme-Court-strikes-down-Montana-law-reaffirming-Citizens-United" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">overturned Montana’s 100-year-old ban on corporate spending</a> in elections.Former staffers and interns who worked for WTP, its successor group American Tradition Partnership, and Christian and Allison LeFer, the Colorado couple who ran those organizations and a host of other political groups, turned over thousands of emails to Motl as part of an investigation leading up to a civil lawsuit.<a href="http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/politics/new-cache-of-wtp-emails-preview-arguments-coming-in-wittich/article_d8ee4df6-272e-5727-959c-e9f547a781f1.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Motl is suing Bozeman Republican Rep. Art Wittich</a> in Helena District Court, alleging Wittich broke Montana campaign finance laws by accepting illegal corporate campaign contributions. Motl alleges WTP/ATP and other groups provided coordinated campaign services to Wittich and other conservative Republican candidates at little or no cost to the candidates.Wittich has denied the allegations, saying he paid for the services he was provided. He has accused Motl of engaging in a “<a href="http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/local/2015/12/22/wittich-motl-tussle-continues/77776142/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">political witch hunt</a>.”That case is scheduled to go to jury trial March 28.Motl made the email documents available for inspection by reporters in response to a series of public information requests from the Montana Free Press and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.Some of the documents in the emails tying NRTWC to WTP/ATP’s Montana primary campaign activities include:<ul style="margin: 0px 0px 24px 25px; padding: 0px; list-style-position: initial; list-style-image: initial;"><li style="margin-bottom: 12px;">Emails showing NRTWC’s executive director, Jedd Coburn, wrote the text of “issue letters” on behalf of Montana Republican legislative candidates;</li><li style="margin-bottom: 12px;">Emails showing Christian and Allison LeFer, a.k.a. Allie Andrews, and their staff were in regular communication with Coburn and other NRTWC staff and officers regarding WTP/ATP campaign activities;</li><li style="margin-bottom: 12px;">Emails showing that Dimitri Kesari, who was the director of NRTWC’s government affairs department, conducted candidate training seminars in Bozeman for ATP-vetted candidates, and a “Campaign Training School” in a Chicago suburb for NRTWC field staff, which Christian LeFer attended;</li><li style="margin-bottom: 12px;">Emails showing the LeFers and other WTP/ATP staff worked with Kesari on various projects, including a candidate “target list”;</li><li style="margin-bottom: 12px;">Written statements indicating that ATP/WTP staffers were paid by NRTWC, and that Kesari “ultimately cuts checks” to LeFer and other ATP staffers;</li><li style="margin-bottom: 12px;">A sworn affidavit by former NRTWC employee Dennis Fusaro stating that NRTWC sent four staffers to Montana to work for LeFer in 2010;</li><li style="margin-bottom: 12px;">A sworn statement by Fusaro that the NRTWC staff, provided “labor, skilled services (e.g. computer work, copy writing), printing, mail preparation, and equipment usage for the benefit of candidates at reduced costs and even, at times, free.”</li><li style="margin-bottom: 12px;">A sworn statement by Fusaro that NRTWC ran, and paid for, a direct mail program and conducted phone banking on behalf of candidates;</li><li style="margin-bottom: 12px;">Emails showing that NRTWC communications director Jeremy Dahl provided “walk lists” and “issue id’d lists” and other valuable voter information to candidates.</li></ul>
A review of the emails indicates O’Neill was deeply involved in the day-to-day operations of the organizations centered on GOP legislative campaigns. The emails indicate O’Neill and other WTP/ATP staffers had regular communication with the LeFers and high-level NRTWC officials surrounding the campaigns of Republican legislative candidates.Many of the highlights of the emails come from Andrew O’Neill, a staffer who worked on graphics and website design on behalf of WTP/ATP and the various campaign services corporations run by the LeFers.In one of the emails, a document details the offerings of a turn-key campaign operation called Smart Simple Campaigns which says: “EVERYTHING BELOW WE DO FOR INVITEES IS FREE OR AT COST.”In another email, Christian LeFer invited 26 Republican legislative candidates to candidate training seminar in Bozeman.“Your campaign’s effectiveness and your ability to recruit volunteers, and fundraise will immensely benefit, money-back guaranteed,” the email states, adding, “Please do not forward…”Motl said that is the main problem with the operation: The NRTWC-affiliated groups in Montana provided services and labor to certain candidates without disclosing what was done or how much was spent. In some cases, the documents show, those groups gave away those services for free.“The significant thing for Montanans is that in the 2010 Montana Republican primary elections, there was a group that consistently sought privacy with the candidates it was working with, and provided those candidates services that were compensated by paid professional staff with the payment being from the National Right to Work Committee to those staff people,” Motl said. “Those paid staff provided sophisticated, targeted voter id lists for the legislative districts that candidates were running in. They provided walking lists for the candidates. They did graphics for the candidates; they built websites. And the candidates didn’t pay for it.”<h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 24px; line-height: 1.3; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">Andrew O’Neill’s emails</h2><h4 style="margin: 0px 0px 24px; line-height: 1.3; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">2,101 pages selected from some 14,000 pages submitted to Motl</h4><div id="DV-viewer-2693100-Complete-File-From-Motl" class="DV-container" style="margin-bottom: 8px;"><h2 style="margin: 0px 0px 24px; line-height: 1.3; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;">Dennis Fusaro’s affidavit</h2><div id="DV-viewer-2698141-2015-01-16-Dennis-Fusaro-Affidavit" class="DV-container" style="margin-bottom: 8px;"></div></div></aside></aside></section></article><div class="article-bottom nocontent" style="font-size: small; margin: 0px 249.234px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><aside id="largo-author-widget-2" class="widget widget-1 odd default largo-author clearfix" style="margin-bottom: 24px;"><div class="author-box row-fluid author vcard clearfix" style="width: 965.797px; clear: both; margin: 0px;"><h3 class="widgettitle" style="margin: 0px 0px 8px; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1.3; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 0.12rem; z-index: 30;">ABOUT <a class="url" href="https://montanafreepress.org/author/jadam984/" rel="author" title="See all posts by John S. Adams" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">JOHN S. ADAMS</a></h3></div></aside></div>