New information about the shadowy political activities of California billionaire Tom Steyer has led the Washington State Republican Party to renew its Public Disclosure Commission complaint against the NextGen Climate Action Committee sponsored by Thomas Steyer (letter can be viewed at the bottom of this page).
“The people of Washington State deserve to know the truth about the biggest donor behind the campaign of Nathan Schlicher, especially when that donor has already flooded this state with more than a half million dollars and seems to be trying pretty hard to hide where his money is going in the closing days of the election,” said Susan Hutchison, Chair of the Washington State Republican Party.
It was just last Friday that PDC staff said it had “no reason to believe” that Tom Steyer’s PAC had violated Washington law. But it appears that the PDC two-day “review” into the complaint filed by the WSRP consisted of asking Steyer’s lawyers if he did anything wrong, and believing him when he said “no”.
The PDC reported in its dismissal letter to the WSRP that the lawyer, Lance Olson, assured the PDC in writing that NextGen “had terminated its operations in Washington State effective October 9, 2013”. He made this assertion after the WSRP complaint was filed on Oct. 23, to justify why his client’s $3 million donation to NextGen on October 18 was not against the Washington State law limiting contributions to political committees to $5,000 in the last 21 days before an election.
Hutchison pointed out that Steyer’s NextGen web site (http://www.nextgenclimate.org/) was still active on Oct. 29, signing up people through a link to “WA Climate Voters” to take a pledge to be a “climate voter” on Nov. 5, and to recruit friends to take the same pledge.
“Tom Steyer came into Washington State to use his millions to impose his extreme environmental views, but he doesn’t want to follow our rules,” said Hutchison. “Since Tom Steyer has already misled the PDC once about what he was doing in Washington State, it’s now up to PDC staff to stop giving Tom Steyer advice on how to avoid public disclosure, and actually investigate whether he broke public disclosure law to hide his activities.”
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