“Attorney General Bob Ferguson desperately wants to be the next governor, but he’s not winning over any voters by exploiting a campaign finance loophole,” reads a Seattle Times article.
“In May, Ferguson transferred $1.2 million of leftover money from his attorney general campaign fund to his 2024 gubernatorial campaign fund. That’s completely legal, as long as he gets permission in writing from all of the donors who gave him money.
“What’s unseemly about the transfer is that Ferguson isn’t saying who those donors are or how much they gave.”
The Seattle Times continues, “To be clear, Ferguson is following the PDC guidance as it was the day he transferred the money. He also says he will follow the guidance going forward. But he’s quite comfortable slipping through the loophole of a few days that allows him to hit up some of his supporters for more money than they should give.”
Separately, the Washington state Supreme Court handed the thrift store chain Savers Value Village a unanimous win in a long-running legal fight with Attorney General Bob Ferguson, finding that its marketing practices constitute protected free speech.
The justices ruled 9-0 that the U.S. Constitution protected the company’s marketing practices.
According to general counsel Rich Medway, Savers Value Village paid $580 million to charitable partners globally in the last five years and kept 3.2 billion pounds of goods out of landfills.
“It’s hard to understand, with a business model like ours that is so positive …why the attorney general decided to pursue this for eight years,” he said. “It’s a model that should be celebrated.”
STATE OF WASHINGTON, v. Value Village, conclusion ‘For the above reasons, we hold that the State’s CPA claims infringe on TVI’s First Amendment right to engage in charitable solicitation. Therefore, we affirm the Court of Appeals in result. We remand to the trial court to dismiss the State’s CPA claims and to rule on attorney fees and costs.”
A King County Superior Court Judge has ordered the Washington State Attorney General’s Office to pay Value Village more than $4.2 million in attorney’s fees in that case.
According to WashCOG.org “lawmakers introduced two bills in the Washington legislature that would make it harder for the public and the press to fight for public records. The bills would tilt the balance of power in records disputes more to the government’s favor.”
“This pattern of behavior is contrary to our form of government. A democratic republic relies on its citizens to oversee their agencies. Government weakens its overseers when it keeps them in the dark.”
The preamble to the state Public Records Act is an eloquent restatement of this principle:
“The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may maintain control over the instruments that they have created.”
The Olympian wrote on the issue, “The Washington Attorney General’s Office is contending that state lawmakers can refuse to provide certain records to the public under a legislative privilege exemption, court filings show.
“Defendants are immune from being required to produce certain records under Article II, Section 17 of the Washington Constitution,” the AG’s Office wrote in response to a lawsuit filed in January against state legislators.
Public records are still being withheld under the exemption after McClatchy requested unredacted copies of those files.
“WashCOG is disappointed that the state Attorney General’s Office has apparently agreed with the state legislature’s argument that it can declare records secret whenever it wants by citing legislative privilege,” WashCOG said in the statement. “This is a new interpretation of an old provision in the state constitution. A privilege allowing legislators to withhold records at will is unsupported by Washington statutes, case law and constitution,’ they wrote.
“We’re troubled that Washington state’s legislative and executive branches are now arguing that lawmakers can hide more of their work from the public by citing a new privilege that was unrecognized and unused until last year, when lawmakers quietly started claiming it without any public discussion,” WashCOG added.
According to The Jason Rantz Show and MyNorthwest.com, “Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s office could arrest or civilly commit conservatives for uttering mainstream positions under a terrifying and illegal plan to redefine domestic terrorism that punishes speech.”
“His office now claims some conservative views, or anything he deems as misinformation, are examples of “domestic extremism.” He even wants to create a Washington version of a Ministry of Truth to fund journalists to push his political agenda,” Rantz said.
HB 1333 would create a left-wing Domestic Violent Extremism Commission in the AG’s office. The members are asked to recommend legislative solutions to combat disinformation and misinformation, address early signs of radicalization, and develop a public health-style response.
Additionally, a jury found three Washington police officers not guilty in the March 2020 in-custody death of Manuel “Manny” Ellis in Tacoma after a historic months long trial and three days of jury deliberations.
In his closing argument, defense attorney and former Pierce County prosecutor Jared Ausserer said, “Don’t let Bob Ferguson in the AG’s office or their army of attorneys or staff or unending tax dollars they’ve thrown at this case through expert witnesses, to try to get you to see what they want, hear what they want, or determine what happened as they want.”
The Seattle Times reports, “The state attorney general’s office and Department of Social and Health Services have been fined $200,000 — and face the prospect of forking over hundreds of thousands of dollars more in legal fees — for what a judge called “egregious” and “cavalier” withholding of evidence in an ongoing lawsuit.” A trial is set for December.
Center Square reported, “The Washington Attorney General’s Office has been accused of trying to squash an ethical complaint investigation made against two Washington State University employees as part of a request for proposal put out by the AGO.”
“The allegations have been made by Police Strategies President Bob Scales, a former prosecutor for King County who intended to subcontract with several universities potentially bidding on the RFP to create a public police use of force database under SB 5259. The accusations and circumstances surrounding the ethics investigation underscore the close ties between the AGO and WSU, which is one of its clients,” according to TJ Martinell, staff reporter.
If all that wasn’t bad enough for Washington taxpayers to bear, a recent tie in the U.S. Supreme Court may cost Washington $2 billion.
The court’s 4-4 split settled a long-running court battle between tribes and the state over salmon-blocking road culverts.
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement, “It is unfortunate that Washington taxpayers will be shouldering all the responsibility for the federal government’s faulty culvert design.”
Tara Lee, a spokesperson for Governor Jay Inslee, told OPB.org she’s not sure where legislators will find the money.
