AMY CARNEVALE: WHERE'S YOUR FULL DISCLOSURE?
THE MASSACHUSETTS REPUBLICAN PARTY FULLY SUPPORTED JIM LYONS IN SPITE OF A GREAT DEAL OF OFFENSIVE ACTIONS...
MASS GOP JIM LYONS SUPPORTED DONNIE PALMER KNOWING ABOUT HIS
ANTI-ASIAN POSTS!
Boston police union was unaware of endorsed City Council candidate’s anti-Asian posts, group says
“We were completely unaware of these postings and we do not condone these racist statements."
BOSTON.COM
MassGOP to pay $36K after allegations of illegal donations
One of the most significant contributions came from the campaign of a former lawmaker now serving prison time.
The Massachusetts Republican Party faced allegations of taking tens of thousands of dollars in unlawful donations—including from the campaign of a congressional candidate who is now serving prison time—and has now agreed to pay the state more than $36,000 in a settlement agreement.
The donations in question were made to the state party in 2022, when it was operating under previous leadership. The state Office of Campaign and Political Finance noted in the agreement that the party’s current leaders have fully cooperated with the investigation. The party did not admit to violating the law.
The agreement was reached on Aug. 29 but was released to the public this week.
OCPF conducted an audit of the party’s bank records and flagged 11 donations it received between March and December 2022. These totaled $36,759.45. By far the largest donation, a check for $27,723.45, came from the congressional campaign of Dean Tran.
Tran, a former state senator, unsuccessfully attempted to oust Rep. Lori Trahan in 2022. Earlier this year, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison on federal fraud charges. Prosecutors said Tran fraudulently collected more than $30,000 in pandemic unemployment benefits and collected income that he failed to report to the IRS.
In June, Tran pleaded guilty on separate state charges that he stole a gun from an elderly constituent. He is serving a six-month sentence concurrently with the 18-month federal sentence. Tran has also been indicted on charges that he violated state ethics laws by using members of his Senate staff to campaign for him during his reelection campaigns in 2018 and 2020.
The state party is barred from taking contributions from federal accounts like Tran’s congressional campaign, according to OCPF. After OCPF identified this donation as potentially coming from a prohibited source, the state party “incorrectly” amended its finance report to show that the Tran donation came from his state campaign account, which would have been allowed. OCPF officials later confirmed that the donation came from Tran’s congressional campaign, according to the agreement.
The party believed that its “books were clean” in late 2023 after talks with OCPF, the party’s current chair, Amy Carnevale, told The Boston Globe. But copies of checks obtained by OCPF through a grand jury investigation unrelated to the party identified more than $73,000 in prohibited donations. The party eventually negotiated its penalty down to about $36,000.
The state party did not respond to a request for comment Thursday morning. Canevale told the Globe that “sloppy accounting practices” were mostly to blame for the excess and prohibited contributions.
“We’re grateful for the opportunity to continue to put the 2022 election behind us and really focus on our ability to support candidates moving forward in the 2026 cycle,” she told the paper.
Massachusetts Republican Party dogged by new cash, legal woes weeks before election
MassGOP Chair Amy Carnevale also reports Lyons-era lawsuit settlement in Friday letter
The Massachusetts Republican Party settled a lawsuit Friday tied to work done by an outside marketing firm during the 2022 election but quickly found itself entangled in new cash and legal woes just ahead of the November election, according to a letter obtained by the Herald.
2023 THIS INVOLVED THE ENTIRE FATTMAN FAMILY!
Massachusetts GOP couple agree to state’s largest settlement after campaign finance investigation
BOSTON (AP) — The Massachusetts Attorney General’s office announced settlements Tuesday with a Republican couple and others after investigators found evidence of campaign finance violations.
The settlements to be paid by Republican state Sen. Ryan Fattman, Worcester County Register of Probate Stephanie Fattman and others total hundreds of thousands of dollars — the largest amounts ever paid by candidate committees to the state to resolve cases after campaign finance investigations, according to Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell, a Democrat.
The Office of Campaign and Political Finance investigated contributions funneled from Ryan Fattman’s senate campaign committee through state and local Republican committees to Stephanie Fattman’s register of probate committee during her 2020 reelection campaign.
In 2020, Ryan Fattman’s campaign donated money to the Republican State Committee and the Sutton Republican Town Committee, which used the money to help fund more than 500,000 mailers to support Stephanie Fattman’s reelection campaign, according to investigators.
The contributions, totaling more than $160,000 — of which $137,000 flowed through the Republican State Committee — far exceeded the legal limit of $100 on contributions from one candidate to another, Campbell said.
Under the settlement both Stephanie Fattman and the Stephanie Fattman Committee must pay out the full amount of the impermissible contributions funneled to the committee through the Republican State Committee — $137,000. Ryan Fattman must pay $55,000.
Donald Fattman, former treasurer of the Ryan Fattman Committee and Ryan Fattman’s father, must pay $10,000.
“We are grateful to put this matter behind us, and are appreciative of the outpouring of support we received along the way. The professionalism we experienced from the Attorney General’s Office was noteworthy. They treated us with respect, conducted business with decorum, and ultimately agreed that there was no liability or wrongdoing attributed to us,” Ryan Fattman said in a statement.
He also said he and his wife were “targets of political persecution from an outgoing political appointee” and that successful Republicans are held to a different standard than Democrats in the heavily Democratic state.
Last month the attorney general’s office reached a settlement agreement with the Massachusetts Republican State Committee in the same campaign finance violation case. The Committee has agreed to pay a total of $15,000 by December.
The Sutton Republican Town Committee also entered into an agreement, paying the remains of its committee bank account to the state, more than $5,200. As part of the agreement, Anthony Fattman, Ryan Fattman’s brother and chair of the Sutton Republican Town Committee, will resign.
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