Vermont GOP chair Jack Lindley has again renewed his request for Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell to appoint a special counsel to investigate whether Sorrell broke campaign finance laws during his primary campaign.
Lindley sent an open letter on Monday, asking Sorrell to reconsider his prior refusal to appoint such a counsel. Sorrell has consistently maintained that he broke no laws, and didn’t illegally co-ordinate his campaign with a Super PAC funded by the Democratic Attorney Generals Association. The Super PAC spent $180,000 on advertising for Sorrell, some of which featured former Gov. Howard Dean, who also campaigned with the attorney general.
Aside from a special independent counsel, “there is no other practical option for conducting an investigation of a sitting Attorney General in Vermont,” reads Lindley’s letter.
“You obviously cannot investigate yourself and none of the other state’s attorneys has the resources to be able to conduct such an investigation,” the letter continues. “Therefore, an independent counsel is the only option.”
“In these circumstances, the refusal to appoint an independent counsel will make you effectively immune from justified inquiry and the very legitimacy of your office will be called into question,” concludes the letter.
In October 2012, when Lindley made his first request, Sorrell suggested he turn to a state’s attorney. Lindley says it appears that Addison County state’s attorney David Fenster can’t or won’t investigate.
Fenster told VTDigger his office is still reviewing the request.
“None of our offices are structured in such a way where we have a ready staff to engage in these types of investigations,” Fenster said. “I don’t think that means we’re incapable of doing it, but it’s outside of our normal duties.”
Still, Sorrell refuses to reconsider appointing independent counsel. He called doing so a “gross waste of $20,000 to $50,000” in taxpayer funds, partly because there’s no incriminating evidence to be found, he said.
“I always thought Republicans were supposed to be fiscally conservative,” Sorrell told VTDigger. “It’s a gross waste of money to have a special prosecutor try to find evidence that doesn’t exist. There was no collusion here, no violation of campaign finance laws.”
“He [Lindley] wants me to waste a bunch of taxpayer money and I’m not going to do it,” continued Sorrell. “It’s a pathetic attempt on his part to keep a case alive” for partisan political reasons, he said.
Sorrell pointed out that Jack McMullen had already tried and failed to pursue the same case in a court hearing. A Burlington judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence in late January.
“McMullen had the opportunity. They had the opportunity to investigate, and they had no evidence to present,” said Sorrell. “Jack McMullen and his attorney had every right to do discovery, to investigate the evidence…They had their day in court, and they lost.”
“They didn’t even bother to try to seek answers from me under oath,” he continued. “They didn’t seek to question Howard Dean.”
Sorrell recently settled with Brian Dubie and the Republican Governor’s Association over campaign finance litigation, where the state alleged that the Dubie and the RGA were guilty of illegal political co-ordination.
Retaining outside counsel for the state isn’t unprecedented – Sorrell did just that for Vermont Yankee litigation, Lindley said.
If state’s attorneys wanted to investigate campaign finance violations, Sorrell said, they likely have the resources and certainly have the jurisdiction. “The question is whether they want to take the time to do it,” said Sorrell.
A provision in recent campaign finance legislation would have required Sorrell to appoint independent counsel in cases of conflicts of interest. But that section was quietly removed by the Senate Government Operations committee earlier this month.
The provision was dropped after assistant attorney general Eve Jacobs-Carnahan said that state’s attorneys are the natural and appropriate place to turn in cases of conflict of interest.
Jacobs-Carnahan said the change would undermine the authority of the judicial branch of government and lead to a situation in which the Legislature micromanages how Sorrell does his job.
