Did Hawley use state resources for political gain? Audit says private emails cloud finding
The Missouri Attorney General’s office under Republican Josh Hawley may have misused state resources to boost his successful campaign for the U.S. Senate, according to an audit released Thursday by Democratic State Auditor Nicole Galloway.
At the core of the possible misuse was Hawley’s decision, within weeks of his January 2017 swearing-in as attorney general, to import out-of state political consultants to help direct his office — and raise his national profile. Those same advisers would go on to run his 2018 campaign that unseated Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.
Whether Hawley or his staff broke the the law is unclear, the report concludes, because they regularly conducted state business off government servers through use of private email and text messaging.
“By allowing campaign-paid consultants to interact and advise (attorney general’s office) staff,” the report said, “former Attorney General Hawley potentially used state resources for political purposes.”
The Star first revealed the arrangement in October 2018.
Hawley, who stepped down as attorney general in January 2019 after being elected to the U.S. Senate, has called Galloway’s findings both exonerating and an act of political bias by a Democrat who is running for governor.
He released his response to the audit to conservative media weeks before the report was made public, and hours before its official unveiling he announced he planned to file a complaint with the Missouri State Board of Accountancy.
His attorney argued that there was no evidence Hawley “ever engaged in any misconduct or violated Missouri laws or ethics rules.”
“I have nothing to hide on this or any of the many accusations Democrats made during the last campaign,” Hawley told The Star Wednesday, pointing to his decision to release internal emails with his consultants during his final month as attorney general in 2018.
The 450-page report, the result of more than a year of work by the auditor’s office, includes transcripts of depositions with former staff, emails, financial records and other documents. The release of the transcripts, not unprecedented but a departure from usual practice, added to the politically charged atmosphere surrounding the audit.
The attorney general’s office decried the decision to make the transcripts public, implying in a letter to to the auditor that there could be legal repercussions for not keeping the interviews confidential.
“As the Chief Legal Officer for the state of Missouri, the Attorney General’s Office has repeatedly expressed and continues to express serious concerns with the political nature of this audit and the unprecedented inclusion of transcripts, likely in violation of Missouri Statute 29.200.17, which states in relevant part that ‘audit work papers and related supportive materials shall be kept confidential,’” Chris Nuelle, Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s spokesperson, said in a statement Thursday.
Galloway said in press conference Thursday that she released transcripts in the interest of transparency and that it was not “out of the ordinary” to include additional appendices of information in an audit report. There is no law that specifically prohibits the disclosure of sworn testimony gathered in the course of an audit, according to her office.
“We wanted to include as much information as possible so people could see the facts for themselves,” Galloway said.
She criticized Hawley for taking his complaints to Twitter prior to the audit’s release, saying he knew “full well” that if she responded she would be breaking Missouri law.
“It goes to show he was never interested in accountability or facts,” Galloway said. “He was interested in an attempt to discredit my office ahead of findings being released.”
Campaign consultants
The consultants and Hawley’s government staff used private email accounts to communicate and organize meetings during work hours, occasionally in the state Supreme Court building in Jefferson City where the attorney general’s main office is located.
Hawley denied any wrongdoing, but The Star’s reporting triggered a complaint by a liberal nonprofit to Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft alleging that the arrangement violated a constitutional prohibition on use of state resources for personal or political purposes.
As part of Ashcroft’s investigation, he asked Galloway for assistance in order to utilize the auditor’s office’s subpoena power.
Ashcroft ended his investigation without involving the auditor, ultimately concluding he could not find evidence to back up allegations that Hawley or the attorney general’s office violated election law.
Galloway continued to look into the accusations as part of a routine audit conducted after a change in a statewide office. While the secretary of state only has jurisdiction to investigate election law violations, Galloway’s office said the audit has a broader scope of inquiry.
A second audit that delves into issues not raised in Ashcroft’s investigation will be released in the coming months, Galloway said.
Appearance of impropriety
In Missouri, elected officials can use campaign cash for expenses incurred in connection with official duties. But both state and federal law prohibit any use of public resources for personal or political purposes.
Galloway’s audit found that Hawley’s staff coordinated with his consultants “for purposes not always documented.”
Many of the interactions between Hawley’s government staff and campaign consultants “give the appearance of political activity by state employees while using state resources, but no evidence exists that any laws were violated,” the audit said.
Hawley has long argued that he brought in the consultants because one had experience running a government office in Louisiana and another was a communications expert.
These consultants, who previously served as advisers to former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, among other candidates, were paid by Hawley’s campaign. They never received any state money nor had any contract with the attorney general’s office to provide services.
If Hawley’s government staff had maintained better documentation, the audit said, “any appearance of impropriety could have been avoided.”
But since most of the communications between the consultants and attorney general’s office staff were conducted using private email and text messaging, their actions create the appearance that “state resources were used improperly.”
Emails document eight conference calls and three in-person meetings involving campaign consultants and government staff in the first seven months of Hawley’s tenure as attorney general.
Yet the audit noted several of the email discussions reference other meetings that may have been held but not included in records that were turned over.
In one email, for example, Hawley’s then-chief of staff, Evan Rosell, said he “enjoyed spending time with everyone over the last few days.” However, official calendars, emails and records do not contain any documentation of meetings held around the time of the email.
“The content and timing of several personal emails of (attorney general’s office) staff demonstrate potentially inappropriate communications with campaign-paid consultants,” the audit said.
During the seven months these meetings and conference calls were held, leading up to his entry into the U.S. Senate race, Hawley’s state campaign paid his consultants around $100,000, according to the audit.
“Campaign-paid consultants, by definition, serve a political function,” the report says. “They are hired to get their candidate elected to office. In contrast, (attorney general’s office) staff serve an administrative function and are in place to perform the work of the government.”
In sworn testimony, Rosell recalled Hawley’s then-legislative director, Rachel Hassani, expressing concern in mid-2017 about consultants’ presence.
“She said something to the effect of, ‘It’s illegal to have consultants in the office,’” Rosell said.
Rosell said he told Hassani, who has worked for Republican lawmakers and political campaigns, that she did not have to participate in meetings if she was uncomfortable.
Michael Martinich-Sauter, Hawley’s former deputy general counsel, said in his sworn testimony that he also recalled Hassani expressing concern. And in hindsight, he thinks the consultant’s role wasn’t worth it.
“I would certainly say retrospectively whatever benefit their involvement might have had has been outweighed by the sort of perception that has been generated,” he said.
Private emails
The use of personal email, calendars and text messaging by government staff to conduct official business also violated the attorney general’s own records policy, the audit said.
The attorney general’s office policy requires that “all electronic written communication made or received in connection with the transaction of official business be made or received using the (attorney general’s office) communications systems.”
It says employees may not use their personal devices for official business unless they are logged in to their official accounts.
Yet in sworn testimony, Rosell said he used personal text and email to communicate with office employees, but he did not retain messages related to government business.
Two other former employees also admitted using personal email to communicate with other staff. In a written statement, one of the consultants said he didn’t recall ever communicating with state employees using their official government email address.
The arrangement led to a lawsuit last year by the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, against the attorney general’s office claiming it was in violation of Missouri’s Sunshine Laws.
The DSCC made a records request in September 2017 for any communications between Hawley’s attorney general office and the consultants running his campaign.
Hawley’s office denied the request in a letter to the DSCC in October 2017, saying it “searched our records and found no responsive records.”
But those records did, in fact, exist.
After The Star revealed the use of private email in Hawley’s office a year later, the attorney general’s office began working to track down the emails in question and make them them public.
The DSCC lawsuit is still ongoing.
Hawley’s attorney wrote in response to the audit that the attorney general’s office always retained materials related to state business, even if that business was conducted on a personal device or account.
Campaign car
The audit said Hawley used a state vehicle, driven by a state employee, on trips where the purpose was not documented in travel itineraries or vehicle mileage logs.
“Records reviewed determined at least a portion of some of these trips had political purposes,” the audit said, “and other trips had the appearance of being personal in nature.”
The state employee was directed to take specific hours of leave from state time, and was paid from federal campaign funds. However, there are no records of Hawley’s state or federal campaigns reimbursing the state for use of a government-owned vehicle.
The audit points specifically to five times the state car appears to have been used for political travel and two that appeared to be personal, including a December 2017 trip with his wife to a Kansas City Chiefs game that Hawley said he was asked to attend as part of his work as attorney general.
Hawley’s attorney said any stops related to political activity were incidental to state business, and that Hawley was following the practice of his Democratic predecessors.
“Both Mr. (Chris) Koster and Mr. (Jay) Nixon spent thousands of dollars reimbursing the state or state employees for non-official travel,” Hawley’s attorney wrote.
The audit said that is not accurate, noting that Nixon reimbursed the state for political use of a government car by paying for not just personnel costs but also mileage. The audit also noted that Hawley directly paid the state employee, instead of remitting payments to the state, unlike his predecessors.
Political bias
Hawley and his former employees were wary of the Democratic auditor looking into their two years in office from the very beginning.
During the deposition of Daniel Hartman, who for a time served as Hawley’s chief of staff, his attorney openly suggested that Galloway would seek to use the audit to undermine an elected Republican.
“You’ve got a boss that’s running for governor,” the attorney said during the deposition, “I’m not saying she’ll do this or she won’t do this, and frankly, America is America, but she would have some incentive to take potshots at a sitting senator from the opposite party.”
Two weeks before the audit’s Thursday release, Hawley began publicly criticizing Galloway.
He pointed to an Aug. 20, 2019, email, inadvertently sent to the attorney general’s office by the lead audit manager Pam Allison, who said she would drop one section of the report and “beef up the personal email/personal calendar section.”
Hawley’s attorney accused the auditor of “altering the audit’s conclusions in order to make the audit appear more critical.”
Hawley also pointed to a Galloway staffer overseeing the audit who donated $50 to McCaskill’s campaign. The aide wrote on social media that senators who oppose removing President Trump from office “will go down in history as not fulfilling their oath to their country.”
The fact that Galloway hired David Kirby, who was McCaskill’s campaign manager, drew criticism from Hawley. Kirby’s hiring, Hawley’s attorney wrote, was “deeply inappropriate and potentially unethical.”
“It’s a bunch of bizarre conduct,” Hawley told The Star, “so I don’t know what’s going on there. It’s for other people to look into, but I just think it’s real strange.”
The public accusations from Hawley sparked a hearing of the Missouri House Special Committee on Government Oversight last week.
Jon Halwes, director of quality control for the auditor’s office, told the committee that the employee who gave money to McCaskill was removed from the audit after the donation was discovered.
“He was removed because the situations described presented the appearance that his work might not be independent,” said Halwes, a 35-year veteran of the auditor’s office who has served under both Democrats and Republicans. “Not that it was not independent. Just that it made the appearance that it might not be.”
At Galloway’s Thursday press conference, Allison told reporters the audit team was in the early stages, still completing field work, when the email was inadvertently sent. The remark showed that they were still evaluating what evidence rose to the level of a significant finding, she said.
Allison, who was hired in 1992 under Republican Margaret Kelly, said she frequently uses the terminology “beef up” in casual emails to her staff. A Bolivar native, she said she grew up on family cattle farm.
“We raised calves from birth until they are about a year old when we send them to the feed lot, where they are ‘beefed up’, or finished,” Allison said. “...I only meant that I intended to add detail or finish the finding.”
Regarding Kirby’s role in investigating the attorney general’s office, the audit said “there was none.”
“Mr. Kirby’s conflict regarding this audit was disclosed and documented as part of the audit planning process,” the audit said. “As a result, he was excluded entirely from any discussions pertaining to this audit.”
Galloway said the idea that there should be “a political litmus test to work for the state of Missouri is not only absurd,” but “illegal.”
She criticized Hawley for targeting career state employees, saying the “abuse” they had to endure was “unacceptable.”
“A sitting U.S. senator used his political apparatus to essentially conduct opposition research on state employees and then went to Twitter to disseminate false allegations,” Galloway said. “This behavior is bizarre.”
Beyond accusations of political bias, Galloway was also criticized by the current attorney general for publicizing the transcripts of depositions.
Jonathan Hensley, Schmitt’s general counsel, argued in a letter to the auditor that the transcripts contain “privileged and confidential information.”
“Your dedication to this unlawful path leaves us no choice to determine the appropriate next steps necessary to address the patent, even admitted, illegality and professional impropriety of your actions,” Hensley wrote.
The auditor’s office says there is no legal barrier preventing the release of the transcripts, which were included for the purpose of “transparency and public interest.”
“Your letter appears to be a continuation of the pattern to delay and control this audit,” Paul Harper, the auditor’s general counsel, wrote to Hensley, “and seems to include a veiled threat against the auditors working on this audit.”
Galloway said she has not heard from attorney general about what his “next steps” may be.
“If he had questions about our authority or actions, he could have sued me,” Galloway said.
This story has been updated.
The Star’s Steve Vockrodt contributed to this story from Kansas City. Lowry reported from Washington.
This story was originally published February 6, 2020 at 1:00 PM.
