Gingrich Denies Fec Allegations
House Speaker Newt Gingrich angrily denied on Thursday that a GOP political committee had illegally supported his 1990 campaign. Democrats seized on newly released documents to challenge the speaker’s conduct.
Gingrich, R-Ga., used the word “phony” repeatedly to describe new allegations of campaign finance violations, filed in court by the Federal Election Commission.
He specifically rejected FEC-released documents from the organization, GOPAC, that indicated the group considered the Georgian’s re-election its highest priority. The documents said GOPAC provided about $250,000 in 1990 for “Newt support.”
“No they did not. They explicitly did not,” Gingrich said at a news conference.
Gingrich was general chairman of GOPAC in 1990, a time when the organization was not registered with the government to finance federal election campaigns.
Even as the partisan salvos were being exchanged on Capitol Hill, documents newly released by the FEC provided additional insight into GOPAC’s operation during that period.
According to a Jan. 7, 1991, letter from the executive assistant to Wisconsin philanthropist Terry Kohler, Kohler was contributing $100,000 to GOPAC. “My understanding is that the money is to be divided evenly between the GOPAC-92 PLAN and Newt Gingrich projects,” executive assistant Mary Ten Haken wrote.
In 1990, GOPAC strategists considered setting up a fund for Gingrich that contributors like Kohler would give to with the understanding that the contributions would go to “help Newt.” GOPAC lawyer Peter Derry said Wednesday that the plan was never enacted.
GOPAC contends it only tried to influence state and local elections until its 1991 registration with the election commission. An FEC lawsuit is seeking disclosure of GOPAC’s receipts, donors and expenditures and is asking for an unspecified fine.
The speaker’s most persistent critic in the House, Democratic Whip David Bonior of Michigan, said he would file a new ethics complaint based on “a personal, multimillion-dollar slush fund” - a reference to the “Newt support” money.
Bonior called the documents a “smoking gun” that shows Gingrich violated House standards of conduct. He said the chairman of the House ethics committee, Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Conn., has “conducted the biggest cover-up” in the panel’s history in a yearlong investigation of Gingrich.
Johnson said the committee has been “vigorous” in its work behind closed doors, and added, “Taking a lot of time is not a negative.”
One complaint under investigation alleges that a college course taught by Gingrich was not an educational activity, but a fund-raising arm of GOPAC. The committee has taken no action on any of the half-dozen complaints filed so far, although it is considering an outside counsel to investigate the course.