Unraveling the Citizens for Judicial Reform Fraud

Regular readers of this site will already be familiar with the story of Citizens for Judicial Reform (CJR), the smear group funded by out-of-state ideologues that ran baseless attack ads leading to the November defeat of Cole County Circuit Judge Tom Brown. Though there's been tsk-tsking and general approbation about just how impolitic the CJR attacks on Judge Brown were, an important question remains to be asked and answered: who was responsible for the questionable shuffling of CJR funds between unrelated campaigns and the subsequent fraudulent reporting of such expenditures?

From press accounts and reports filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission we can gather a number of facts about the case, including:

-- On October 6, 2006 a campaign financed committee called Citizens for Judicial Reform was filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission. Mike Clark, a Department of Mental Health employee and Jefferson City resident, was listed as the treasurer of that committee. The statement of committee organization indicated that the committee was formed with the purpose of opposing circuit judge candidate Tom Brown.

-- Citizens for Judicial Reform took contributions on October 27 and October 30 totalling $175,000. These contributions were both from national interest group Americans for Limited Government.

-- On November 7, Citizens for Judicial Reform reportedly paid $173,195 to Axiom Strategies for media purchasing and mail costs. Axiom is the consulting firm run by GOP consultant Jeff Roe.

-- An account of the campaign from Missouri Lawyers Weekly (unavailable online) indicates that Jeff Roe claimed at a panel discussion to have spent $96,000 on the effort to defeat Judge Brown. That story is referenced in a recent Columbia Daily Tribune guest column by Steve Scott.

-- $96,000 is some $77,000 fewer than the $173,000 that Roe's Axiom Strategies was paid by Citizens for Judicial Reform.

-- A November 17th story from the St. Joseph News-Press reveals that campaigns run by Jeff Roe against Buchanan County Commissioner Tom Mann and a local use tax were also paid for with money from Citizens for Judicial Reform.

-- On November 13th, Roe described the partial intent of the Citizens for Judicial Reform campaign, stating, "I think some of these groups just want a scalp."

These facts raise a number of important questions.

Was Citizens for Judicial Reform treasurer Mike Clark the person responsible for allocating a sizable portion of his committee's funds to a race other than that which was stated as its sole purpose of the statement of committee organization on which he swore by signing? If not, then who was? Did Clark perpetrate a fraud on the contributor to his committee by indicating that dollars would be spent on one purpose when he actually intended to spend them on another?

Did consultants, candidates and committee treasurers use Missouri Ethics Commission committees as legal fictions intended to obfuscate the places and manner in which money was spent on political campaigns here in Missouri? If we use the finance regime concocted in the current scenario as an example, it's conceivable that wealthy funders can give any amount to any committee, have that committee forward it in total to some "consultant", then have it spent against or on behalf of any candidate without need for further reporting or disclosure. This is a fraud cooked up deliberately for purposes of frustrating reporting requirements and for circumventing the clear intent of campaign finance law.

Why hasn't Citizens for Judicial Reform treasurer Clark yet been called before a special investigator to examine his role in the clear subversion of the state's campaign finance regulation? By having Clark answer some questions --which he's heretofore refused to do for the media-- law enforcement can begin to Chip away at the cabal of conspirators responsible for these fraudulent acts. Perhaps Clark would be willing to reconsider his reticence if he had to own up to the legal consequences of his committee's actions.

Seems like some new lawkeeper or prosecutor looking to assert his independence from the corrupt in his own political circle should be anxious for a closer look at the whole mess.