Carolina Journal’s David Bass reports on Wednesday’s Board of Election hearing, which featured about five hours of testimony from former governor Mike Easley. Here’s a sample of key testimony:
Easley denied knowing about memos circulated by his former campaign manager, Jay Reiff, describing a loophole that allowed funds to be funneled to the campaign through the state Democratic Party, potentially circumventing a $4,000 limit on donations from individual contributors.
“I wasn’t in the loop on these kinds of things,” Easley said.
Easley later said that he raised money for the party in 2006 and 2008 to help legislative candidates. Jim Cooney, a lawyer for the Democrats, argued that Easley had no say in how those funds would be spent.
But in apparent contradiction to Cooney’s premise, Easley said he didn’t want to raise money for nonviable candidates, suggesting that he had some influence over how the party would spend the funds.
And though Easley served two terms as attorney general before becoming governor, and as AG headed a bipartisan commission to study campaign finance reform, at one point he testified he did not understand some key aspects of campaign law.
Bass will be live-blogging today’s testimony. You can follow his posts here.
