U.S. Senate candidate Manny Sethi on Wednesday accused opponent Bill Hagerty of accepting a donation from U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and then discretely returning it.
This, according to a press release that the Sethi campaign emailed this week.
“This is so swampy: Bill Hagerty accepted the maximum donation from Mitt Romney and was so desperate to hide it that he never reported Romney’s donation on his campaign finance report,” Sethi said in the press release.
“Hiding campaign donations is 100 percent illegal and Hagerty, along with his entire campaign team, should be investigated.”
The Tennessee Star on Wednesday asked the Hagerty campaign to respond.
“This is the kind of deceitful campaigning Tennesseans have come to expect from the Sethi campaign,” said campaign spokesman Michael Byerly in an email.
“The only person trying to hide a donation is Manny Sethi and his ActBlue donation to his close friend Tom Perriello who supported Obamacare and called the NRA a ‘nut-job extremist organization.’”
The Federal Election Commission addresses the matter on its website.
“A refund occurs when a committee has actually deposited a contribution in its bank depository and then pays it back to the contributor by issuing a check, or when a committee charges back a contribution electronically credited to the committee’s account. The refund will be disclosed on the committee’s reports,” the FEC said.
“Alternatively, a committee may return a contribution to a donor without depositing it. The return must be made within 10 days of the treasurer’s receipt of the contribution. In this case, the committee does not have to report either the receipt or the return of the contribution.”
Wednesday’s New York Times reported that Romney’s Believe in America PAC contributed $5,600, the maximum amount allowed per law, to Hagerty’s campaign. Romney reportedly did this one day after Hagerty announced his candidacy last September.
“Bank records indicate that Mr. Hagerty’s campaign deposited the check,” The New York Times said.
“But in October, Mr. Hagerty surprised Mr. Romney by quietly returning the donation in full.”
The New York Times went on to say that neither the PAC’s contribution nor Hagerty’s disbursement of the refund appears in his campaign filings. The paper called that “a potential violation of campaign finance law.”
An unidentified spokesman for the Hagerty campaign told The New York Times the following:
“Once we realized it was deposited, we alerted the bank and we reversed the transaction, because we do not share Senator Romney’s liberal, anti-Trump political positions.”
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Mitt Romney is a fascist thug just like Sethi and Haggerty.
Hagerty is exactly what is wrong with the GOP and why it never gets permanent Reagan Democrat support. It has come to the point where if Hagerty wins tonight, I will do something I have done once in 48 years of voting–support a democrat in a US Senate election. The other Democrat wasn’t even running in my state, but he was more conservative than the RINO running against him.
James Mackler is a liberal Jewish attorney with a leftist, reform rabbi wife that, in a speech, blamed the Pittsburgh Synagogue shootings on President Trump, causing the three members of my church and myself to stand up and walk out of the memorial service when we were there in support of their faith. To show how much I cannot support Hagerty, I will put a Mackler sign in my yard if Sethi isn’t the nominee.
The elitist scumbag went on the attack against Dr. Manny with half-truths, and in addition threw under the bus anybody that had converted from the jackass to the GOP, like President Reagan himself did many years ago.
My voting record in Presidential Elections has been. 1972–Nixon, 1976–Ford, 1980 & 1984–Reagan 1988–Bush, 1992-Perot, 1996–Buchanan, 2000 & 2004–W, 2008–Keyes, 2012–Goode, 2016–Trump. IOW, I don’t support John Lindsay Republicans any more than I support George McGovern clones.
Hagerty was close to Romney until he was running for the Senate. Now he has been trying to distance himself including a commercial saying he is not the kind of Republican Romney is. It is disingenuous.
Hagerty was sure quick to throw his life-long friend under the bus!
Cannibalism, it’s what’s for dinner…in the “swamp”!
Tennesseans why would we take a chance on Hagerty? He is heavily invested with Romney. Swamp Queen Marsha, is aligned with Mitch McConnell. Let’s look at Mitch’s voting record according to the Heritage foundation. Mitch gets a lifetime score of 63! Marsha, little bob, Lamar Alexander all have supported Mitch. Is our country any better off? We need new senate gop leadership! Change the archaic 60 vote filibuster rule. Tennessee has a simple majority and works well for our state. If Hagerty was to win, the democrats will make Haggerty hiding the contribution a crime putting the safe republican seat in jeopardy of losing. Dr Sethi please vote for new senate leadership. Bench Mitch and John Thune (his voting record is a miserable 71). The stronger leader you are, maybe will help Marsha find her way as conservative leader for Tennessee!