Janet Nguyen’s Laundered Money – Still Dirty

Last week, the Voice of OC reported on an ongoing FPPC investigation of Supervisor Janet Nguyen’s campaign funding irregularities and the efforts of a single attorney, miraculously representing 11 donors whose financial and communications records were being subpoenaed. It took a few days, but on Thursday afternoon the other shoe dropped. A detailed review of the court documents revealed that the FPPC had more than just a hunch behind its subpoenas. In their response to the motion to quash, state attorneys wrote:

“In addition, the FPPC has records showing six individuals illegally received reimbursements for their contributions to the Friends of Janet Nguyen Campaign, and during interviews conducted, six individuals have admitted to receiving reimbursements, which constitutes illegal campaign money laundering.”

The contributors all made substantial contributions to Nguyen’s Supervisor campaign and many are listed on campaign filings as students or unemployed. If it wasn’t for the motions to fight the subpoenas, it is possible that the allegations being actively investigated would not have come to light. The FPPC isn’t known for disclosing the details of ongoing investigations.

Supervisor Janet Nguyen is locked in a tight race for the 34th Senate district seat against Rancho Santiago Community College District Trustee’s President Jose Solorio. While Nguyen has been dogged by allegations of inappropriate fundraising activities before, little has managed to stick. Coming just a couple of weeks out from election day, this is certainly not the type of headline she wants to be dealing with.

The Voice of OC reports:

The court documents also cite evidence showing patterns of contributions from individuals with the same home address and employer; misreported addresses, occupation and employer information; and individuals listed as ‘unemployed’ or ‘student’ giving significant amounts of money.

(Click here to read the FPPC documents.)

Campaign money laundering occurs when an individual tries to conceal the true source of a political contribution, often by giving cash to friends or relatives to make a contribution on their behalf.

For his part, Jose Solorio told the Orange County Register; “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Solorio said of the accusations. “She should return those donations as soon as possible and apologize to her constituents.” 

Read more here.

Nguyen’s campaign consultant, Dave Gilliard, has told the OC Register that the investigation is politically motivated in an effort to hurt his client.

“We have no knowledge or reason to believe there is any truth to it,” Gilliard said. “From what we heard, the judge already slapped the FPPC hard for coming into court with such weak evidence, if you want to call it that.”

The difficulty for Solorio will be in convincing voters that the steady stream of investigations over the past few years including this most recent set, which to date have not resulted in any legal allegations against Nguyen, demonstrate enough evidence of potential corruption, to deter them from voting for Nguyen. If this were a politically motivated attack against Nguyen, one would think that these new revelations would have come out much earlier to give Solorio’s campaign more time to make its case against Nguyen.