Courtesy of Pam Martens.
A Sacramento law firm that touts its sophistication in campaign finance matters has been linked to companies secretly operated by Nathan Sproul to register voters. Sproul’s operation is under investigation in Florida and by members of Congress for voter registration fraud, including registering dead people, forging signatures, falsifying addresses, and changing party affiliations. Yesterday, a former employee was arrested in Virginia for tossing completed voter registrations into a dumpster, as reported by Joseph Tanfani at the Los Angeles Times.
Charles H. Bell, Jr. and Thomas W. Hiltachk, founded the law firm now known as Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk in 1991. It bills itself as a leader in campaign finance and regularly brings election law matters before the Federal Election Commission and Appellate Courts.
Bell is currently General Counsel to the California Republican Party, serving in that position since 1999. He also held that position from 1982 to 1993.
While Bell served in that capacity, the California Republican Party has paid at least $1.2 million since 2008 to Grassroots Outreach, LLC, a limited liability company registered with the California Secretary of State by a subsidiary of a foreign corporation, Wolters Kluwer of Amsterdam, which has operations in 35 foreign countries. By using an outside agent to register the firm, Sproul’s ties to the company were shielded from public scrutiny. Sproul has now confirmed to Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog that Grassroots Outreach is his operation.
Recently, Sproul has stated that the Republican National Committee (RNC) asked him to set up a company not linked to him for 2012 voter registration drives, ostensibly because of rampant past allegations of voter registration fraud by people he employed. Sproul was never charged in those matters but was investigated in multiple states.
The Los Angeles Times summed up the ruse this way: “…his reputation is such that when Sproul was tapped by the RNC to do field work this year, officials requested that he set up a new firm to avoid being publicly linked to the past allegations.” That firm, Strategic Allied Consulting, is the one currently under investigation, but the California front firm, Grassroots Outreach LLC, has been operating in California since at least 2008. Lee Fang, writing for The Nation, tracked the address of Grassroots Outreach to Sproul’s office address in Tempe, Arizona.
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