Craig defense may use campaign money

Idaho Sen. Larry Craig will set up a defense fund and seek donors willing to help him cover the costs of fighting his conviction in Minnesota and an ethics complaint before a Senate committee, his staff said Thursday.

How or when the fund would be set up is still being determined, and whether it will collect enough to cover expenses is unknown.

“We’re still in the formative stages,” said Sid Smith, a Craig spokesman.

Craig also could use money from his campaign fund, one of his attorneys said.

Craig had not formally announced whether he would seek re-election, but like most incumbent members of Congress he was raising money even before committing to a run. Craig for U.S. Senate, the campaign committee he’s had since at least 1999, raised nearly $328,000 in the second quarter of 2007 and had some $550,000 in the bank, according to reports filed with the Federal Elections Commission in mid July.

Stanley Brand, a Washington, D.C., attorney working for Craig, said the senator clearly can use campaign funds to pay for the expenses of fighting a complaint in front of the Senate ethics committee. Although federal law prohibits using campaign funds for personal use, the FEC has previously ruled that members of Congress can use that money for defending themselves against ethics complaints, Brand said.

A 1998 opinion involving an Alabama congressman facing a House ethics investigation notes that candidates “have wide discretion in making expenditures to influence their election.”

They can’t use campaign money to pay legal expenses they would have even if they weren’t in office, but they can use it “to pay legal expenses that would not exist absent (their) candidate or federal officeholder status,” the opinion said.

Whether Craig could use campaign funds to try to withdraw his guilty plea to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge in Minnesota is not so clear-cut.

Craig was arrested on June 8 by an undercover detective who was conducting a vice sting in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport restroom where police had received numerous complaints of lewd conduct. Originally charged with invasion of privacy and disorderly conduct, he pleaded guilty on Aug. 1 to the latter charge, which is less serious.

Craig now says that the detective was misconstruing his actions, and he didn’t consult a lawyer before pleading guilty to the lesser charge as a way to make it go away. He has hired attorneys and plans to ask the court to let him withdraw his guilty plea and contest the charge, his staff said earlier this week.

He has left open the possibility that he will not resign from office if he can withdraw his guilty plea, clear his name in the ethics committee and have his committee leadership positions restored by Sept. 30.

The 1998 opinion suggests that Craig could use campaign money to pay for all or part of the costs of fighting the criminal case in Minnesota. Even if a criminal charge is personal, the opinion says, “the activities of candidates and officeholders may receive heightened scrutiny and attention in the news media because of their status.”

But each case is different, said Michelle Ryan, a spokeswoman for the FEC. “Legal fees would be looked at on a case-by-case basis.”