US Senate candidate from South Dakota met Sarah Palin last summer in Baltic.
Sarah never officially endorsed her but Annette got in trouble anyway:
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota authorities on Wednesday arrested defeated U.S. Senate candidate Annette Bosworth and charged her with multiple counts of perjury and filing false election documents, saying she fraudulently attested to gathering voter signatures when she was really on a Christian mission trip to the Philippines.
South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley charged Bosworth with six counts of perjury and six counts of filing false documents related to election campaign laws. The arrest warrant was served a day after Bosworth lost the Republican primary with just 6 percent of the vote.
"The election complaints received by the Secretary of State involve conduct that is serious, deliberate, and must be addressed in order to preserve the integrity of our elections," Jackley said in a statement. "Because this is a federal elected office, I have and will continue to discuss the investigation with federal authorities."
Jackley said the 42-year-old Bosworth was given notice of the warrant Wednesday morning and turned herself in to the Minnehaha County Jail. She was immediately released.
At a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Bosworth called the charges "a political intimidation scheme" against her by Jackley, who was initially appointed to his position by former Gov. Mike Rounds. Rounds defeated Bosworth and three other Republicans Tuesday night to capture the GOP nomination for the seat being vacated by retiring Democrat Tim Johnson.
"We still believe this is a political persecution," Bosworth said in a prepared statement. She did not take questions.
Annette also read a chapter from Sarah's playbook, the one where you play the victim:
Embattled former Senate candidate Annette Bosworth said Attorney General Marty Jackley is prosecuting her for both political and personal reasons on Friday.
Bosworth, a doctor, is facing 12 felony charges for violating oaths on her nominating petitions. She said her mistakes weren't serious and that Jackley is going after her for "revenge."
"Marty Jackley's goal is not justice, it's revenge," Bosworth said in a news conference in her medical office. "He's trying to take away my medical license. If he can't get a criminal conviction or an admission of guilt, he's going after my livelihood again."
A felony conviction could be grounds for Bosworth to lose her medical license. Several years ago, she reached a settlement with the attorney general's office over alleged Medicaid fraud in which Bosworth didn't admit any wrongdoing.
"Marty Jackley wants to destroy me and he won't be satisfied until he does," she said.
Bosworth talked about the potential consequences of the 12 felony charges, each of which has a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a $4,000 fine.
"Marty Jackley wants me shackled and locked in a cage, unable to see my children graduate from high school or college," she said.
But Bosworth is highly unlikely to see prison time, even if convicted on all counts. Under South Dakota's 2013 criminal justice reform, low-level nonviolent felonies like she's charged with have a presumption of probation instead of prison.
Jackley has previously said he is charging Bosworth and another former candidate, Clayton Walker, because their offenses were "serious, deliberate and must be addressed in order to preserve the integrity of our elections."
Bosworth has also said Jackley's prosecution is political because he has raised money for Bosworth's primary opponent, Mike Rounds.
"The election is over," Jackley said. "The attorney general does not have the luxury of taking a pass or a walk on tough issues. Her conduct and statements pertaining to this situation speak for themselves."
At her news conference Friday, Bosworth declined to answer questions about the substance of the charges, citing legal advice. Specifically, she wouldn't say whether she didn't read or understand the oath she signed that people were signing her petitions in her presence.
Bosworth has admitted that multiple people signed her petitions when she wasn't there, despite signing the oath to the contrary. She said on Friday that she hadn't realized she was doing anything wrong.
"These were real people who were supporters of mine. They aren't fake, and they aren't dead," Bosworth said. "Why would I knowingly and intentionally perjure myself to obtain signatures of legitimate voters and supporters?"
She and a spokesman, Lee Stranahan, drew a contrast with Walker. He's accused of making up fake voters for his petitions. Bosworth's violations of the law, Stranahan said, are much less serious.
And Annette Bosworth isn't the only one in trouble:
Barring some disaster, Chris McDaniel’s tea party-backed primary challenge to Mississippi Republican Sen. Thad Cochran looked likely to succeed on Wednesday morning. After all, McDaniel already weathered one lurid scandal in which four supporters were arrested for allegedly plotting a nursing home break-in. Surely his campaign could make it to the June 24 runoff without another bizarre police investigation, right?
Well, maybe not. The Hinds County Sheriff’s Office announced Wednesday that it was investigating three McDaniel supporters who were locked inside the local courthouse, where primary ballots were held, on election night.
Unlike the nursing home arrests, which involved prominent backers of McDaniel but no one directly tied to the campaign, the courthouse lock-in included a top McDaniel staffer, campaign coalition director Scott Brewster.
According to the McDaniel campaign it was an innocent misunderstanding. The campaign said it had dispatched three people to the courthouse to monitor the outstanding election night count, and they were accidentally stuck. They then called the local county executive, Pete Perry, a Cochran supporter, for help.
The sheriff’s office, however, isn’t convinced. The investigation is driven by the McDaniel supporters’ inability to get their story straight, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office said.
“There are conflicting stories from the three of them, which began to raise the red flag, and we’re trying to get to the bottom of it,” Othor Cain, a spokesman for the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department, told The Clarion-Ledger on Wednesday. “No official charges have been filed at this point, but we don’t know where the investigation will lead us.”
Oh and Julianne Ortman went down in flames at the Minnesota GOP convention. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
0 comments:
Post a Comment