Brady Toensing, an attorney with the D.C.-based firm diGenova & Toensing, filed a four-part complaint this week that outlines what he describes as Sorrell’s “long-term and chronic flouting” of Vermont’s campaign finance laws.
Reporter Paul Heintz has recently highlighted Sorrell’s alleged campaign finance violations in a series of columns in Seven Days.
“Sorrell seems oblivious to the seriousness of the scandal but this scandal is the toilet paper stuck to the shoe of his career and it’s not going away,” Toensing said in an interview.
Sorrell denies any wrongdoing.
The Vermont Attorney General said in an interview on Thursday he will not hire independent counsel to investigate because it would be a waste of taxpayer money.
“As I’ve said repeatedly I try very hard to be in compliance with our campaign finance laws,” Sorrell said, adding that he would “fully comply” with any investigation that is undertaken.
But it’s not clear an investigation will be undertaken any time soon.
Gov. Peter Shumlin who could appoint independent counsel to investigate the matter has said he doesn’t intend to do so, at least not while he’s focused on advancing his agenda in the Legislature.
Sorrell says a state’s attorney could conduct an investigation.
But David Cahill, the executive director of the State’s Attorneys and Sheriff’s Association, says county prosecutors don’t have the resources or expertise to conduct an investigation. An online petition on change.org urging the state’s attorneys to look into the matter hadn’t gained much traction as of Thursday morning.
State’s attorneys also have a potential conflict of interest. The county prosecutors have close ties to the Vermont Attorney General office, which provides the state’s attorneys with general guidance and support for big cases.
The back story
Paul Heintz of Seven Days wrote a column about Sorrell’s 2012 campaign donations not long after the Vermont Attorney General fined Dean Corren, a Progressive candidate for lieutenant governor in 2014, $72,000 for an email solicitation from Vermont Democratic party activists, urging them to support Corren.
Sorrell says the email solicitation was an in-kind donation worth $255. Corren received public financing, and under campaign finance law, could not receive any campaign contributions. Aware of this stipulation, Corren sought legal advice about the email.
Corren is now appealing the $72,0000 fine, which Valley News editorial writers called “disproportionate” in an editorial this week.
It was the fine that drew Heintz’s attention to Sorrell’s own campaign finance donations and reporting in 2012. Sorrell was mentioned in a Pulitzer-prize winning report by Eric Lipton of the New York Times as one of a number of attorneys general across the country who has accepted money from the Democratic Attorneys General Association. Many AGs had also accepted campaign money directly from law firms that they later employed. The Times reported that Sorrell hired a law firm that had contributed to his campaign.
Until 2012, Sorrell, who had been in office for 15 years at that point, had not had a serious challenger. But that year, the then 65-year-old attorney general was in a heated primary battle with TJ Donovan, the Chittenden County state’s attorney. Donovan was young, articulate and popular, and posed a serious threat to Sorrell. (In the end, Donovan lost by 714 votes in the primary.)
Sorrell needed money, and he got the backing he needed from the Committee for Justice and Fairness, a political action committee run by the Democratic Attorneys General Association in 2012. He also benefited from the support of former Gov. Howard Dean who endorsed Sorrell and made campaign appearances with the Attorney General. In August 2012, Dean narrated CJF ads for Sorrell.
According to Brady Toensing’s complaint filed this week, Sorrell changed the state’s campaign finance rules on July 25 of that year, and the change paved the way for the attorney general to receive nearly $200,000 from the Committee for Justice and Fairness.
Toensing accuses the Sorrell campaign of improperly coordinating with CJF and violating campaign finance laws that limit direct contributions to candidates $2,000. (PACs and individuals can make unlimited expenditures on behalf of candidates for media buys, as long as the expenditures are not coordinated with the candidate’s campaign.)
The original complaints from the Vermont GOP go back to 2012. Jack Lindley, the chair of the party, accused Sorrell of misconduct in October of that year and asked Sorrell to appoint an independent counsel to investigate allegations of improper coordination between Sorrell’s campaign and the Democratic Attorney General Association’s Political Action Committee.
Sorrell ignored Lindley’s complaint. And David Fenster, an Addison County state’s attorney who was asked to look at the case, was unable to pursue the allegations because he lacked “sufficient resources,” according to Toensing.
Toensing’s complaint alleges that Sorrell violated campaign finance laws in 2012 by coordinating with the CJF; that he failed to properly report campaign expenditures on 16 occasions; that he improperly coordinated campaign activities with Dean Corren in 2014; and that he received a large donation from a law firm that he later hired to pursue an oil and gas suit for the state of Vermont.
Toensing questions the legitimacy of Sorrell’s practice of paying for campaign expenses out-of-pocket and reimbursing himself from his campaign account. A Seven Days review of Sorrell’s campaign finance reports from 2009 through 2014 found he reimbursed himself $18,524 without specifying how that money was used.
Another count in the complaint stems from the hire of an outside firm to help Sorrell’s office with a lawsuit against oil and gas companies the state filed last year. Sorrell was connected with the Texas firm Baron & Budd by power-brokering attorneys with whom Sorrell is friendly at a 2013 conference. After that meeting, as Seven Days reported, attorneys with Baron & Budd donated $10,000 to Sorrell. Months later, the firm was hired to work on the oil and gas suit.
Ironically, one of the counts addresses a joint press conference Sorrell held with Dean Corren during the 2014 campaign. (As previously mentioned, Sorrell and Corren are locked in a separate legal battle over allegations that Corren violated the campaign finance rules for public financing.) Sorrell has insisted the campaign appearance was not a campaign event. However, Toensing writes in his complaint that Sorrell’s office received press releases about the event in advance that “describe the event as political.”
If investigated, Sorrell’s actions could result in “fraud and bribery” charges, Toensing says, that would carry “significant civil and criminal penalties” if prosecuted under state or federal law.
Toensing represented Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie in a 2011 campaign finance lawsuit. Sorrell alleged that Dubie coordinated campaign activities with the Republican Governors Association. Both the RGA and Dubie paid fines in a 2013 settlement.
TOENSING LETTER/COMPLAINT:
