Sarah Palin Now Michelle Bachman: Enough is Enough!

By C. J. Refsland on March 26, 2013 • ( 1 )

My Comments: It’s happening again! Don’t you remember how the media ripped Sarah Palin apart, and not only her, but her family too? Well now their coming after Bachman. Maybe they think their clearing the path for Clinton’s run in 2016, maybe they are just out for Revenge. But this is an all out assault! Michelle Bachman has been under fire for months because she wanted an investigation into Islam activities. This is rediculous, and I say enough! They should be investigating the campaign funds of BHO instead. There was allegations of plenty of fraud there, not to mention the voter fraud. This is the hit squad fortold by Valerie Jarrett plain and simple. She said, when it looked as though BHO would win his re-election that now they were going to take care of their opposition and they are doing just that. Wake up!

By The Daily Beast

Eighteen months ago, the Minnesota House member was considered an unlikely but undeniable Republican rising star, winning the Iowa straw poll that unofficially begins the primary season. Today, she is embroiled in a litany of legal proceedings related to her rolling disaster of a presidential campaign—including a Office of Congressional Ethics investigation into campaign improprieties that has not previously been reported.

Michele Bachmann speaks at the 40th annual Conservative Political Action Conference on March 15. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

The Daily Beast has learned that federal investigators are now interviewing former Bachmann campaign staffers nationwide about alleged intentional campaign-finance violations. The investigators are working on behalf of the Office of Congressional Ethics, which probes reported improprieties by House members and their staffs and then can refer cases to the House Ethics Committee.

“I have been interviewed by investigators,” says Peter Waldron, a former Bachmann staffer who’s embroiled in his own fight with his former boss, involving his allegations of pay-to-play politics and improper payments by the campaign—making him one of several members of Bachmann’s inner circle who’ve fallen out with the woman they once hoped would become commander in chief. While he was careful to avoid specifics in regard to the investigating body, Waldron said that “investigators came [and] interviewed me and are interviewing other staff members across the country.”

Two other former staffers confirmed the existence of the investigation this weekend, and on Monday Bachmann’s campaign counsel, William McGinley, of the high-powered firm Patton Boggs, confirmed that the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) was looking into the congresswoman’s presidential campaign last year.

“There are no allegations that the Congresswoman engaged in any wrongdoing,” McGinley said. “We are constructively engaged with the OCE and are confident that at the end of their Review the OCE Board will conclude that Congresswoman Bachmann did not do anything inappropriate.”

Former staffers tell The Daily Beast that investigators have allegedly asked about allegations of improper transfer of funds and under-the-table payments actions by Bachmann’s presidential campaign, specifically in relation to the campaign’s national political director, Guy Short, and Bachmann’s onetime Iowa campaign chairman, state Sen. Kent Sorenson. Questions directly about Bachmann, they said, have been primarily focused on what she knew about those men’s actions and when she knew it.

“Politics is like jumping off a diving board. She belly flopped.

Sorenson and Short did not return separate calls for comment.

The independent, nonpartisan OCE, established in 2008 and chaired by former CIA director Porter Goss, looks into charges of misconduct by House members and their staffs and then decides whether to recommend that the House Ethics Committee investigate the charges—thus relieving the committee members of the political pressure of deciding whether to investigate one of their own. When OCE, which has a limited window of about three months to investigate and decide, does recommend that the committee pursue a case, it publicly releases its report—giving its advice considerable sway. While it lacks enforcement powers, OCE has been widely credited for pressing the committee to probe and then censor New York DemocratCharles Rangel and forcing the resignation from the House of Georgia RepublicanNathan Deal (who left, thus removing himself from the authority of the committee, while he was running, successfully, for governor). OCE does not comment on ongoing investigations, but one source with knowledge of the Bachmann case said it was now in its final, 45-day period before OCE makes its determination about whether to recommend that the Ethics Committee pursue the investigation.

The emergence of still another investigation tied to Bachmann’s presidential misadventure is the latest hit in what’s been a slow-motion crash for an unusually irresponsible politician who’d briefly emerged as a national figure with White House ambitions.

Narrowly reelected to what had been a safe House seat after abandoning her presidential run, Bachmann returned to Congress diminished. Her bids to join Republican leadership have been rebuffed, and House colleagues co-exist with her uneasily. The Tea Party caucus she helped found to much fanfare in 2011 is now dormant. And even before her year in Iowa, her staff rarely stayed with her for long—she’s seen a 46 percent annual turnover rate during her time on the Hill, according to The Washington Times—not a vote of confidence from those who know her best.