In response to the revelation that Sen Kay Hagan’s (D-NC) husband’s company benefitted from the 2008 stimulus she voted to pass, the North Carolina Republican Party has filed an ethics complaint against the vulnerable Democrat.
Hagan, who has been fighting to retain her Senate seat against Republican challenger Thom Tillis, has held on to a tight but steady lead in recent weeks. The new complaint will help keep some attention, for a time, on the potential improprieties surrounding her stimulus vote.
Monday, the NC GOP announced it filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee over the apparent improperness of the nearly $390,000 in stimulus grants and tax credits that went to JDC Manufacturing, a company co-owned by Hagan’s husband’s company, that was first reveal last month by Politico.
In its announcement, the NC GOP linked to a new Politico report about the ethics complaint filed by Claude Pope, Chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party.
“The Committee needs to investigate whether Senator Hagan used her office to steer taxpayer dollars to her husband’s company and/or whether she provided him with insider knowledge obtained through her office as a United States Senator that allowed his company to receive almost $400,000 in taxpayer funds,” Pope wrote in the letter to Ethics Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA.) and ranking member Johnny Isakson (R-GA), according to Politico’s report.
According to Politico, much of the complaint Pope filed deals with details revealed by Politico’s initial report about the stimulus and JDC Manufacturing.
“The Committee needs to investigate whether Senator Hagan steered taxpayer funds to her husband for her own personal gain in violation of the Senate Ethics rules and the public trust,” Politico quoted Pope’s Monday letter to the committee. “If the Ethics Committee determines that Senator Hagan provided insider information to her husband’s company — or used the influence of her public office in any way — to assist it in securing grant money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, she should be sanctioned to the fullest extent of the law.”
Hagan meanwhile has adamantly denied any wrongdoing.
“Kay had absolutely no part in helping JDC apply for or receive these grants. Her only involvement was when she made sure that a respected ethics attorney was consulted to ensure that it was appropriate, and the attorney found that it was,” Politico quoted Hagan spokesperson Sadie Weiner. “Speaker Tillis is hypocritically attacking Kay’s family, but he has refused to answer questions about a bank he owns founders stock in that has benefited from more than a million dollars in Recovery Act tax credits.”
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