March 08, 2011 12:31 AM UTC

Stealing from Teachers? John McBride Should Probably Get Himself a Lawyer.

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• by: glasscup

I wanted to follow up on posts from others last week, because I think McBride and the DeFENSE gang may have made a few legal missteps that could have some consequences. And after looking into McBride’s background, it turns out he’s done some shady – if not downright illegal stuff with campaign finance before.

First, the back story I found on this guy.

When McBride ran for school board in 2007, his campaign was financed almost entirely by the DCTA. He got $20,000 from the union and another $1,000 from another teacher’s union group. That was about 80% of the money he raised.

You can find the reports here:

http://www.denvergov.org/city_…

What is interesting is what happened to the money after the election. According to his campaign finance reports, after the election McBride’s campaign was left with at least $3,114 in cash. What to do with the cash?  Take it, of course. McBride cut himself a check for $700 vaguely defined as a payment for ‘campaign expenses’ and cut similar small checks to a few supporters also reported as ‘campaign expenses.’ After paying for the website, the campaign was left with $834.42 in cash on hand. So he cut a check for $834.42 for ‘campaign expenses’ to his campaign’s registered agent.

What were the payments for? They couldn’t have been for meals – looking at the reports McBride appears to have billed the campaign for dozens of meals all across town. I’m pretty sure that taking your contributors funds as a fat check at the end of the campaign isn’t exactly legal. And combined with his current shady dealings, it’s hard to see why anyone would trust this guy.

Now… about those current shady dealings…

This morning they finally filed their report of expenditures. It is a few days late, so hopefully there will be a fine. Guess how much they they reported in expenditures? $0. Contributions? $0.

http://tracer.sos.colorado.gov…

But at least one member of their goon squad – “Chuck Crowley” – has admitted that he provided at least $90 worth of supplies to the group in paper. $90 is more than 0.  Moreover, if they are collecting petitions, their petition forms probably have 4 – 5 signature lines each based on forms I’ve seen, meaning that to collect the 5,000+ petition signatures they need to gather, they would have to print at least an estimated 1,200 pages. And since they are aiming to collect more than that (I think I saw 7,000 batted around at one point) that would mean 1,700+ pages. The cost of printing a page from a home printer (and all the ink  etc that would cost) brings the cost per page to what you would pay at Kinkos – about $0.10 per page.

So that’s at least $170 that have been provided to the group. But they are also handing out flyers to everyone which is thousands more pages. And those flyers (seen here http://www.scribd.com/doc/4769… are electioneering communications. They (in addition to being full of lies) specifically advocate for the recall of Easley.

And they don’t just have flyers. Going to the grocery story, I’ve seen them with professional yard signs. Those cost money too.  And things of value the issue committee receives need to be reported.

Second, when McBride initially filed his paper he claimed to have a bank account with Wells Fargo for the group. Then when asked about missing the filing by Ed News he said:

“We don’t have any money to file anything,” said John McBride, the lead petitioner in the recall effort against Easley and the registered agent for the committee Take Back Our Schools. “We don’t have a bank account yet. All we have is people power.”

http://www.ednewscolorado.org/…

McBride’s initial filing showing a bank account with Wells Fargo could constitute a materially false statement for him, which could put him in legal jeopardy. Maybe someone who is better versed legally can clarify on this?

Also, it turns out you need money to open a bank account at that Wells Fargo. $100. So either he had it open or he didn’t. And if he did, that’s another $100 someone contributed.