BREAKING: Matt Meyer Calls For Federal Investigation Into BHL’s Campaign Finances

He made the call today at a downtown press conference.  I attended.  To be honest, there was a relative paucity of detail.  Meyer didn’t specify what alleged criminal activity he wanted the Feds to investigate.  No, the campaign had not yet sent a letter to the Feds.

However, campaign manager Nick Merlino said that the campaign is asking the State Party to withdraw its endorsement of Bethany.

Other than press and campaign flaks, there were no politicos there, and no elected public officials.  At least that I recognized.

This is as good a time as any, though, to share the Meyer campaign’s response to Bethany Hall-Long’s TV interview.  It cites the “10 Top Falsehoods (their words, not mine) From That Interview”.

I’m cutting and pasting, and certainly have not had time to determine the veracity of the content:

1. “There has been no wrongdoing.” 

Actually, there was plenty of wrongdoing. An state-sponsored, independent investigation documented numerous instances in which the campaign broke the law. The report, conducted by a former Philadelphia FBI chief, concluded: “I find [Hall-Long’s campaign’s] account of expenditures in its public campaign finance reporting incomplete, inconsistent, and often inaccurate, leading to an unreliable picture of its financial affairs.”

2. “We discovered that we needed to clarify how much my husband and I had put on our credit cards. […] we paid for legitimate campaign expenses on our credit card. […] And that’s what we needed to clarify, and that’s what’s been publicly listed.”

The report proves that there were more than just credit card transactions, some of which were clearly personal. There were checks – co-signed by Bethany – made out to her husband. Even once Bethany “corrected” her reports last November, she still underreported payments to her and Dana by about $90,000.

3. “We did that on our own. So voluntarily, we put that out because that’s who I am. […] and there’s nothing more transparent than that.”

The State of Delaware had to subpoena Bethany’s campaign multiple times to get documents that she refused to provide to the investigator. Bethany also didn’t amend her reports voluntarily. She did it because her campaign team found more than $200,000 in unreported payments to Dana in her campaign finance reports. And then nearly her entire team quit and people were asking questions.

4. “There was some misreporting, mischaracterizations. But that’s it.”

There was $300,000 worth of falsely reported payments. Falsified campaign reports. And $90,000 is still unaccounted for.

5. [Interviewer:] “Did you personally benefit from the campaign on any of your personal finances?”

[Bethany:] “Absolutely not.”

The independent investigator found that Bethany and her husband used campaign cash to pay down their credit card debt and get rewards points. They also paid themselves more than $90,000 beyond what reimbursement expenses would require. So it certainly seems like they did benefit.

6.“My husband […] did a fine job taking care of the campaign finance reports.”  (My comment:  W-w-w-what??)

Bethany’s husband Dana admitted in an interview that he failed to read the laws on campaign finance and in fact had never known them. He failed to maintain expense records and had no written records of which credit card charges were campaign expenses and which were personal. He misreported the names on campaign expenditures, when in fact the expenditures were made to himself, and he admitted that he had no idea how much the campaign paid him and his wife, and how much they paid the campaign. And ultimately, when you are the candidate, you are responsible.

7. “I have been open and transparent.”

Bethany and her husband have engaged in a year-long attempt to lie, evade, gaslight, and excuse a decade of false campaign reporting. Bethany has never released the alleged “audit” and the state investigation proves it never happened. In fact, in the course of the investigation, the State of Delaware had to issue numerous subpoenas to obtain financial records from the campaign, since they would not just hand it over voluntarily.

And once the independent report was final, Bethany asked the Elections Commissioner to keep it out of the public record.

8. “[Interviewer:] Summit CPA […] found no violations or wrongdoings, but you did not release that audit. People want to know, why did you not release that audit. 

[Bethany:] Again, there’s a lot of misnomers in the press. Wrong titles. We had an internal review of our expenses.”

Bethany herself, as well as her campaign, have called it an audit many times:

Sept 28: “I am working with independent campaign finance experts and forensic accountants to thoroughly audit the finances.”

• Sept 28: The campaign told The News Journal that Bethany “is committed to leading with transparency and integrity, which is why she requested an audit of her campaign finance reports.”

• Oct 2: The campaign told The News Journal that “in the run up to the launch of the campaign, Bethany requested a review and now there is an independent audit of the reports in the works.”

• Oct 10: A campaign spokeswoman told The News Journal that an “independent audit is currently underway and we look forward to having more information soon.”

• Oct 23: Bethany released a statement saying: “Summit CPA, a Delaware-based certified public accounting firm, was brought on board to audit records and receipts and reconcile all expenses and disbursements from the account. As part of the audit, Summit reviewed hundreds of receipts of campaign-related expenses and loans Bethany and her husband made dating back to her first campaign for statewide office in 2016.”

9. “Everything has been out, in the public records. It’s there. The reports have been amended.”

Everything is most certainly not out. The report thoroughly details how an enormous amount of transactions were not included in the campaign finance reports Bethany filed last November, Bethany apparently wasn’t even interviewed during the investigation, and the investigator – a former head of the Philadelphia FBI – could not account for many of the transactions.

10. “We are ready to lead this state.”

Wrong. If you can’t manage a few thousand dollars, you can’t manage 6 billion dollars.”

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