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| | Name : | Rachel Garner | Organization : | N/A | Post Date : | 9/30/2005 |
| Comment : | (Quoted by Rachel Garner, who submitted this comment.)
SENATE ETHICS COMMITTEE CHIEF COUNSEL / DIRECTOR RESIGNS
Harris spoke with Victor Baird of the Senate Ethics Committee office
January 9, and asked him who is responsible for ensuring that FEC
disclosures are complete. She asked whether anyone had followed up to see
why Senator
Hagel did not list his positions with the voting
machine company, and she asked about his characterization of the
McCarthy Group as an "excepted investment fund" and his failure to
disclose that it owned ES&S. Baird was silent, and then said "If you
want to look into this, you'll need to come in and get hold of the
documents."
Unfortunately, according to Alexander Bolton, a reporter at The Hill,
when he went to the Senate Public Documents Room to retrieve
originals of Hagel's 1995 and 1996 documents he was told they were
destroyed. "They said anything over five years old is destroyed by
law, and they pulled out the law," says Bolton. However, when he
spoke with Hagel's staff, they said had obtained the documents from
Senate Ethics Committee files. Copies of the documents are available
at OpenSecrets.org/pfds -- a repository for FEC disclosures.
In 1997, Baird asked Hagel to clarify the nature of his investment in
McCarthy Group on his 1996 FEC statement. Hagel had written "none"
next to "type of investment" for McCarthy Group. In response to
Baird's letter, Hagel filed an amendment characterizing the McCarthy
Group as an "Excepted Investment Fund," a designation for widely
held, publicly available mutual funds. He never disclosed his
indirect ownership of ES&S at all, but apparently no one questioned
this omission, nor his curious characterization of the McCarthy
Group, a privately held company that is not listed on any public
brokerage.
Baird told Bolton that the McCarthy Group did not seem to qualify as
an "excepted investment fund." He reportedly met with Hagel's staff
on Friday, January 25 and Monday, January 27, 2002. Then, also on
Monday, he stepped down. On Monday afternoon Baird's replacement, Robert
Walker,
provided a new, looser interpretation of "publicly available" (though
experts disagree,
saying that a privately held company like the McCarthy Group cannot be
called "publicly
available" in order to avoid disclosing underlying assets.)
Hagel's challenger in the Nebraska Senate race, Charlie Matulka,
wrote to Baird in October 2002 to request an investigation into
Hagel's ownership in and nondisclosure of ES&S. Baird replied, "Your
complaint lacks merit and no further action is appropriate with
respect to the matter, which is hereby dismissed," in a letter dated
November 18, 2002. | |
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