By Karl Bremer © Copyright
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s campaign manager told the St. Paul Pioneer Press this week that Bachmann’s campaign had “frozen” the $10,000 donation it had received from Bobby Thompson, the commander of the embattled U.S. Navy Veterans Association who has gone missing since the St. Petersburg Times and states attorneys general began investigating him.
“We will be freezing the money pending the results of the investigations,” Gina Countryman, Bachmann's campaign manager, told the Pioneer Press. “Congresswoman Bachmann believes people are innocent until proven guilty. However, she wants to ensure her campaign is above reproach and maintains the highest of ethical standards”
But this isn’t the first time Bachmann has had to deal with what may be “dirty money” donated to her campaigns by convicted felons or suspected con artists.
REMEMBER FRANK VENNES JR.?
In 2008, it was revealed that Bachmann had received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Frank Vennes Jr. and his family. Vennes is a convicted money-launderer/cocaine runner/gun runner for whom Bachmann had requested a presidential pardon in 2007.
When Vennes became implicated—but never charged—in the Tom Petters multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme in 2008, it didn’t take long for Bachmann to abandon her principled “innocent until proven guilty” stance. She quickly rescinded her pardon request for her close personal friend, and then tried to further save face by giving away a portion of the money she had taken from Vennes and family—although it was only $9,200 of the $27,400 she had hauled in from the Vennes family from 2005-2008.
Bachmann first tried to give the money to Minnesota Teen Challenge, a favorite evangelical charity of Bachmann’s that once had very close ties to Vennes. He is a former board member of the organization. However, Minnesota Teen Challenge allegedly lost $5.7 million in investments in Petters companies that were made through one of Vennes’ companies.
Rich Scherber, executive director of Minnesota Teen Challenge, said his organization sent Bachmann’s $9,200 check back without even cashing it.
“We didn’t want to be involved if it was dirty money,” Scherber said at the time.
Bachmann eventually found a willing taker for her tainted Vennes money when she donated it to R3, a collaborative of Christian recovery groups that happens to include Minnesota Teen Challenge.
WHERE’S BOBBY NOW?
Meanwhile, the nationwide search for Bobby Thompson goes on.
Bachmann campaign manager Gina Countryman told the Pioneer Press that Bachmann doesn’t know him. It’s not known whether the Bachmann campaign or Bachmann herself has been contacted by investigators or attorneys general seeking information about the whereabouts of Thompson.
It appears certain Thompson was last seen in Minnesota at the April 7 Minneapolis fundraiser for Bachmann featuring former halftime Gov. Sarah Palin, when he made his $10,000 donation to Bachmann. But it’s not clear why Thompson, a resident of Florida for the past decade, would donate such a large sum of money to a relatively powerless congresswoman from Minnesota.
It’s also odd that Thompson is a heavy contributor to other Minnesota Republican candidates and party units. Besides his $10,000 donation to Bachmann, he’s given:
- $21,500 to Republican Norm Coleman’s Senate re-election campaign from 2006-2008
- $7,000 to the Minnesota House Republican Campaign Committee in 2008-2009
- $10,400 to the Republican Party of Minnesota from 2008-2010
- $500 to Republican Marty Seifert’s Seifert for Governor committee in 2009
- $500 to Republican David J. Carlson’s Citizens for David Carlson committee in House District 67B in 2008
A spokesperson for the Minneapolis law firm of Gray Plant Mooty, which represented the U.S. Navy Veterans Association Minnesota Chapter in 2007, declined to say whether the firm still represented them.
“We don’t disclose who our clients are,” he said.
The USNVA are under cease-and-desist orders in several states and criminal investigations are underway by attorneys general in others. Troubles for the elusive Thompson and his mysterious organization are mounting weekly.
Yesterday, an Ohio judge allowed lawyers for the group to withdraw from legal proceedings there because Thompson, the group's only known remaining board member, could not be found. The group’s attorneys last heard from him on June 20. The judge also issued an injunction that seals a UPS mailbox that the U.S. Navy Vets used as an address for its Ohio chapter—just as it had done in Minnesota for five years without being questioned by anyone.
Another Ohio judge has frozen the USNVA’s bank accounts there, and Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray has ordered them to cease soliciting in the state.
Cordray has charged that the USNVA has used charitable contributions to the group to make political contributions in Ohio and other states. The Navy Vets group has denied that.
The group’s primary fundraiser, Associated Community Services of Southfield, MI, also jumped ship from the Navy Vets group last week. The Minnesota Chapter of the USNVA paid Associated Community Services $186,025 for fundraising services from 2006-2009. The group did not claim any fundraising expenses for the Minnesota Chapter in 2005.
Messages left at the Minnesota Chapter’s phone number in St. Paul were not returned. A message left on a Tampa, FL-area phone number that was once Thompson’s and features a gruff male voice saying “Bobby” on the voicemail also was not returned.
John Markman is named as the USNVA Minnesota Chapter’s CFO on the group’s 2009 federal tax filing filed with the IRS April 15 and its 2009 annual report filed with the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office May 17. Bobby Thompson, who had been listed as CFO and “Contact Person” of the Minnesota Chapter until that time, disappeared from the group’s state and federal filings in 2009 as quickly as he disappeared from his Florida duplex that same year.
The signature on the Minnesota Chapter’s dissolution resolution dated May 4, 2010, also appears to be Markman’s.
If the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office was interested in contacting John Markman—beyond the Washington, DC, UPS drop box he gives as his address on the Minnesota Chapter’s federal tax filing—they should have to look no further than the Ohio Attorney General’s Office. Markman was served with a summons and complaint by certified mail on June 28 in the investigation underway there by Cordray.
What is Attorney General Lori Swanson waiting for?
Karl Bremer is a freelance writer in Stillwater, MN. He can be reached at saintcroix@aol.com.
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