Jerich Throws Hatch Under Bus?

Katherin Kersten writes about Ron Eibensteiner's acquittal last week at the show trial in Olmstead/Mower County.

The piece revisits an old friend of ours.

Kersten:

Ron Jerich, a Minnesota lobbyist with DFL ties, was at his home in Mendota Heights in October 2002 as the election season was reaching fever pitch. Jerich was waiting to go door to door for DFL candidates with 20 volunteers. He had no idea that he was about to become a pawn in what he considers an attempt by Minnesota's top legal officer to target political opponents.

Get those last three words. "Target political opponents".

Two years ago, the origin and disposition of this letter was an open question; Jerich didn't return several requests for comment when I wrote about the check and the fabled letter. From the Legislative Auditor's report on the investigation, here's Mike Hatch's testimony; it was October of 2002, and Hatch was at Ron Jerich's house during a lit drop for a DFL legislative candidate:

And [Jerich] hands me this letter. Pulls a letter out of a desk and hands it to me and it's a letter from Ron Ebensteiner (sic), who is the chairman for the state Republican Party. So now I'm trying to figure out how does the state Republican party send a thank you letter when it was a contribution to Commers?...I'm looking at this and I"m thinking, this doesn't make sense. The letter itself says it's from American Bankers, because there is a note at the bottom saying let me know who I should thank at America Bankers. And then I look at it, you know. I'm just kind of reading it and trying to figure out what this is all about. And it says it's to the Republican National State Committee...I take the letter. [Emphasis added] Do the door knock that day. I mean, I'm tring to figure out what's going on here. This is troubling to me. I know that mischief is afoot here. I know why American Bankers is doing this. I don't think Jerich did. He wouldn't have told me if he...I mean, they knew. I mean, it's not any secret my feeling about many insurance companies, and it's not secret what I think about a company like American Bankers. And I really don't think he knew.

At the time, the question was open, and debated among those who cared about the whole incident; did Hatch swipe the letter from Jerich, or did he palm it with Jerich's active connivance?

The LAO reported:

LMr. Jerich acknowledged that he showed Attorney General Hatch and others who had come to the "door knocking" event the letter from Mr. Eibensteiner. However, he said that the letter subsequently disappeared, and he didn’t know who took it.On the other hand, Hatch and Jerich are long-time friends and political associates. Sources close to the story at the time disagreed on the "given" vs. "stolen" scenarios.

Three years later, and in the wake of the Eibensteiner trial, Jerich is talking. Kersten:

"Mike's eyes lit up," Jerich says. "I couldn't understand his interest. He knew I raised money for both political parties, and Eibensteiner's letter was a simple thank you." Jerich thought nothing more about the letter until later that evening, when he searched all over but couldn't find it. It wasn't until months later, Jerich says, when Hatch publicly admitted taking the letter, that "it dawned on me that Mike had taken the letter when I wasn't looking."

Last week, Hatch spokeswoman Leslie Sandberg said Jerich gave the letter to Hatch.

Which is, unsurprisingly, what Sandberg told me in June 2003.

About five months later, Hatch's office provided the letter to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, according to Hatch's own testimony. It served as the basis for a story suggesting that Eibensteiner might have broken campaign finance laws and that the administration of Tim Pawlenty -- by then the new governor (and Hatch's political rival) -- may have entered into a sweetheart deal in settling charges against Jerich's corporate client, a Florida insurance company.

At a subsequent state Senate committee hearing in March 2003, Hatch testified that he had shown the letter to state Commerce Commissioner Glenn Wilson and urged him to avoid such a settlement, though Wilson vigorously denied this. A legislative auditor's probe in May found no evidence of wrongdoing by the Pawlenty administration, though it did criticize aspects of the settlement. Meanwhile, the report pronounced some of Hatch's behavior in connection with the case "troubling."

Unmentioned in Kersten's column; the extreme ethical squishiness of Hatch's contact with Glenn Wilson, the fact that Hatch's proposed settlement was illegal under Minnesota state law, and that the Legislative Auditor criticized the means by which Hatch sprung the settlement on Wilson.

Which brings us to the show trial:

Some months after this, Jerich's purloined letter surfaced again, becoming the principal evidence in a criminal case against Eibensteiner.

The case featured many curious elements. Its venue was Mower County, something of a DFL stronghold along the Iowa border. "Mower County was targeted as the venue of the complaint," says Bill Mauzy, Eibensteiner's attorney, "and the presentation to the grand jury was results-oriented for an indictment against the insurance company and the Republican Eibensteiner."Read the rest of Kersten's column.

If you're a DFLer, it should make you stop and think about who leads your party.

If you're GOP, you need to dig in for the next gubernatorial election; it's going to be ugly. The Eibensteiner Show Trial shows us what's at stake.

Posted by Mitch at November 21, 2005 12:12 PM | TrackBack