An exhaustive 430-page report from the Office of Congressional Ethics portrays a campaign that was not only chaotic but also supervised hardly at all by the candidate. Bachmann suggested to investigators that she ought to be cleared of wrongdoing because she paid so little mind to what her campaign aides and the staff of her political action committee were doing. She was so hands-off, she said, that she never even discussed compensation with Guy Short, the Colorado political consultant central to both operations, because she “just trusted him.” The office didn’t buy the purposely asleep-at-the-switch defense, instead concluding that there was “substantial reason to believe” Bachmann broke federal law and House rules by: either actively or passively permitting Short to be paid for his presidential campaign work with leadership PAC money. either directing or allowing her campaign staff to make her national campaign a vehicle for promoting sales of her personal memoir. either arranging or permitting her publisher to underwrite a book tour that was a thinly disguised campaign swing. The report was released last week by the House Ethics Committee, which said the findings were serious enough that an investigation of Bachmann would be left open indefinitely.
Bachmann's Cautionary Tale: Sweat the Small Stuff, or Pay the Price | Hawkings Here
