FRANKFORT, Ky. — The office of Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron has asked the FBI to investigate circumstances surrounding controversial political contributions made to the re-election campaign of Gov. Andy Beshear and the Kentucky Democratic Party last December.
On Tuesday, Beshear’s campaign manager announced that the campaign and Democratic Party had refunded $202,000 in contributions that the Beshear campaign had determined were in excess of legal limits as to how much a donor can give.
The Beshear campaign and the Democratic Party originally accepted the donations as legal ones within contribution limits made by numerous people who are relatives of London Mayor Randall Weddle or employees of a company co-founded by Weddle.
But the campaign later discovered that the $202,000 actually was all charged to a credit card of Weddle himself and decided to refund those donations.
Intentionally making a political contribution in excess of the limits is a crime. And in response to questions about whether it would investigate the matter, Cameron’s office said late Tuesday only that it was considering its options.
On Thursday, however, Cameron’s office sent a letter to the FBI asking that it conduct an investigation.
That letter, written by Deputy Attorney General Victor Maddox, said: “Please accept this letter as a formal request by the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General for the FBI to investigate the circumstances surrounding contributions in the amount of some $202,000 to the gubernatorial campaign of Andy Beshear. These contributions have been the subject of widespread coverage in statewide news outlets. The contributions were ostensibly made by numerous members of the family of London, Kentucky, Mayor Randall Weddle and employees of a company he co-founded, but apparently were charged by Mayor Weddle to his personal credit card.”
Maddox stated in the letter that Cameron’s attorney general’s office could not conduct the investigation. The office, he wrote “is barred at present from investigating this matter due to controlling ethics opinions.”
Maddox was apparently referring to an opinion of the Kentucky Executive Branch Ethics Commission a few years ago that effectively said that one executive branch official could not investigate another executive branch official if the two officials were facing each other in an election campaign.
Cameron is the Republican nominee for governor in November’s election running against the Democratic nominee, Beshear.
During his weekly press conference, reporters asked Beshear about the donations and the letter to the FBI. The governor said in all of his elections, he has “advised and required that my campaign follow the letter and spirit of every campaign finance law” and to address all situations with transparency and working with regulators.
“My understanding is that the campaign has met each of those requirements, worked directly with KREF (Kentucky Registry of Election Finance), explaining everything they knew about the situation, and worked to remedy it, again, directly with the regulator,” Beshear said. “That is an open transparent way of trying to do what’s right.”
Questions about the large number of relatives of Weddle relatives and friends who made large contributions to the Beshear campaign and Democratic Party were first reported by Kentucky Lantern on April 17.
McKenna Horsley contributed to this report.
This article is republished under a Creative Commons license from Kentucky Lantern, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on Facebook and Twitter.
Tom Loftus is a native of Cincinnati and a graduate of The Ohio State University. His long career in Kentucky journalism includes four years as Frankfort bureau chief for The Kentucky Post and 32 years as Frankfort bureau chief for The Courier Journal. He is a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame and a freelance reporter for the Kentucky Lantern.
