Facts Closing in Around Blunt's Personal Use of Campaign Funds for Criminal Defense

Responses to Congressional inquiries by deposed U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins shed new light on possible violations of campaign law by Governor Matt Blunt related to the federal investigation into his administration's fee office practices. 

Documents recently made available by the House Judiciary Committee answer questions about the nature of previously reported contact between a private defense attorney and a federal prosecutor.  Bud Cummins, in a repsonse to an interrogatory, wrote:

I was contacted by Bill Mateja on behalf of the Governor making what I considered to be legitimate inquiries into whether the investigation involved the Governor personally and if not, whether I would at any time be able to make a statement to that effect. I informed Mateja that I would stay in contact with him, and consider such a statement at the appropriate time, but was unable to discuss the matter while it was under investigation which he completely understood.

Cummins' sworn statement leaves little doubt that former DOJ attorney and criminal defense lawyer William Mateja contacted him explicitly on behalf of the "personal" interests of Matt Blunt, not on behalf of Blunt's campaign or the office of the governor.  Accordingly, if this attorney was paid for his work on the case by Matt Blunt's re-election campaign, such expenditures would represent a plainly prohibited use of campaign dollars for personal expenses. 

The violation would place Matt Blunt in the shameful company of GOP luminaries like Cynthia Davis, who paid personal property taxes using campaign funds. 

The new revelation from Cummins' interrogatory ­makes even more urgent and relevant the need for Matt Blunt to explain how and by whom attorneys' fees were paid in connection with this matter.

Press accounts have suggested that payments made in 2006 by Matt Blunt's Campaign organization to Kansas City-based firm Lathrop & Gage may have been passed on to attorney William Mateja of Fish & Richardson for his work on the case.  Neither Matt Blunt nor his campaign has answered questions about precisely how the payment of fees was handled.

The time has come and gone for Matt Blunt to come clean simply because it is the right thing to do.  It is now incumbent upon the capitol press corps to force him to answer about whether he broke the law.