JEFFERSON CITY — In the summer of 2016, as political newcomer Eric Greitens was competing in the four-way GOP primary for governor, a mysterious political action committee began running advertisements attacking two of his top rivals.
At the time, the treasurer of LG PAC denied any coordination between the group and the Greitens campaign. Such entities are not allowed to coordinate with candidates.
But a report released by the Missouri Ethics Commission on Thursday details evidence of coordination between the Greitens campaign and LG PAC.
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Greitens, who won election that November and resigned on June 1, 2018, signed a consent order with the ethics commission this week, acknowledging that ethics regulators had probable cause to believe the campaign had committed two violations of state campaign finance law.
The commission found no evidence that Greitens personally knew of the violations, but he acknowledged in signing the consent order that Missouri law “requires Mr. Greitens to accept responsibility for all reporting violations by Greitens for Missouri.”
The commission fined the Greitens campaign $178,000 on Thursday — in part for failing to report in-kind donations from LG PAC — but the ethics commission said the campaign could pay $38,000 so long as it commits no more violations.
Jordan Libowitz, spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the ruling bolsters the group’s case against four groups that aided Greitens' 2016 campaign. The group had filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging the outside groups, including LG PAC, purposely worked to hide the source of donations.
“It makes us feel pretty validated,” Libowitz said Friday. “You don’t often see this kind of coordination exposed in this kind of way.”
Libowitz said coordination between PACs and campaigns “defeats the purpose” of campaign finance laws, which require candidates to report their donors.
Though Missouri officials fined the Greitens campaign for failure to report help from LG PAC, the commission dismissed an allegation that the Greitens campaign illegally tried to conceal donors “given the legal framework that allows committees and candidates to fundraise for other entities.”
The 21-page report by the Missouri Ethics Commission, the culmination of a 20-month investigation, describes events dating to 2015.
That spring, Greitens’ campaign began working with two consultants from C5 Creative Consulting, headed by Nick Ayers. Ayers went on to serve as chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence after the 2016 election.
The report says that in October 2015, one of the C5 consultants left to become Greitens’ campaign manager. The report doesn’t name the campaign manager, but Austin Chambers, a former C5 consultant, was Greitens’ campaign manager. Chambers did not respond to a request for comment.
In October 2015, the campaign manager emailed Greitens with a list of objectives that he and the consultant, presumably Ayers, had developed.
The objectives included conducting opposition research on Greitens’ Republican rivals: former House Speaker Catherine Hanaway, businessman John Brunner and then-Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder.
“This is a potential outside expense,” the campaign manager said in the memo, clarifying that research on Kinder could be conducted in-house. “The goal this week is to determine what research we want to gain for each, and to finalize vendor/timeline.”
In the second half of 2015, the Greitens campaign put together a list of potential donors “who either could not give, or elected not to give, directly to” the Greitens campaign, according to the report.
In 2015 and 2016, according to the report, the unnamed political consultant directed Greitens campaign officials to forward names of the potential donors to Tom Norris, of Freedom Frontier, a Texas-based nonprofit that doesn’t have to reveal its donors.
According to the ethics commission, Freedom Frontier contributed $4.4 million to LG PAC between June 1 and July 29, 2016, when the GOP primary for governor was heating up. Freedom Frontier was LG PAC’s only donor, according to the report.
Contributions from Freedom Frontier appeared to correspond with more than $4.3 million in ad buys that summer, according to the ethics commission.
The ethics commission mentions four LG PAC ads, all negative and all against Hanaway and Brunner. The PAC’s name was an attempt to tie the ads to Kinder, the then-lieutenant governor, has said.
“Catherine Hanaway led the fight to get taxpayers to pay hundreds of millions for a new Cardinals’ stadium,” one ad said. “Hanaway for governor? Hmm ... I don’t think so.”
(Hanaway, a partner with the Husch Blackwell law firm, went on to represent Greitens in campaign finance matters.)
When LG PAC made the purchases, according to the ethics commission, one of the Greitens campaign vendors sent an email alert to the campaign manager.
The campaign manager’s response appears to refer to Ayers. “Hoping this is NA,” the campaign manager said. “Pretty boy to the rescue,” another vendor said the next day in an email chain, in an apparent reference to Ayers.
The report says the consultant was “ostensibly disconnected” from the Greitens campaign in the months before the August 2016 primary.
In July 2016, according to the report, the campaign manager (Chambers) spoke to the consultant (Ayers) by phone and “expressed a concern” about the Springfield, Missouri, media market.
After that conversation, according to the report, LG PAC spent nearly $100,000 on advertising in Springfield.
On July 28, the campaign manager emailed a Greitens vendor about the Springfield ad buy. “Well at least he listened when I told him we were worried about Brunner in Springfield.”