ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 21, 1996 TAG: 9608210072
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
The government believes Pat Robertson's 1988 presidential campaign racked up almost $1.7 million in illegal contributions by using a plane paid for by his Christian Broadcasting Network.
But after completing their eight-year probe, election regulators decided it's too late to seek civil fines against the religious broadcaster or the company he heads.
After members of the Federal Election Commission found reason to believe use of the plane and some other campaign activities violated the law, they closed the case in May and announced Friday that the files were public.
Robertson's lawyer, Jan Baran, said Tuesday there was no wrongdoing and the agency was ``smearing'' his client: ``Pat Robertson is appalled that the FEC after eight years would make public raw files containing unsubstantiated charges and innuendo.''
The FEC, often criticized for moving too slowly, is required by law to make public the records of its completed cases. In its final report, the FEC's legal staff said the case probably would be thrown out of court as too dated. The commissioners, in closing the case, said they wanted to concentrate on ``more current and pressing matters.''
Among the FEC's pressing matters is a separate lawsuit against the Christian Coalition, a national religious lobbying group that grew out of Robertson's 1988 campaign.
According to the lawsuit filed last month, the coalition has continued Robertson's pattern of illegal corporate contributions, doing partisan work to help the campaigns of former President Bush and several Republican congressional candidates.
The Christian Coalition says it stayed within the law and will fight the matter in court.
When Robertson founded the coalition in 1989, he said it would espouse the ideals of his campaign for the Republican nomination, which peaked early with a second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.
In 1988, Robertson's short-lived campaign agreed to pay $25,000 in civil penalties for failing to file its financial reports on time. Baran said that should have settled the FEC's complaints.
But investigators also found evidence that Robertson, as chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, arranged for a subsidiary of the company to pay $900,000 for a plane to fly him to campaign events, the report says.
The company spent another $250,000 to modify the plane for Robertson's use, investigators said, then sold it after the campaign. The subsidiary, CBN Continental, also failed to charge Robertson for all operating expenses as required by law, according to the FEC.
In all, the plane amounted to almost $1.7 million in illegal corporate contributions, the FEC commissioners believe.
The FEC also found that the campaign committee, Americans for Robertson, paid less than fair-market value for computers bought from a private direct-mail fund-raising company set up at Robertson's request.
Then the committee sold the computers to a company formed by Robertson campaign manager R. Marc Nuttle, ``gaining over $300,000 in the process'' through ``loans from wealthy supporters who invested in Nuttle's company.''
``The committee's and Nuttle's efforts to pay back these loans resulted in even more apparent violations,'' the report said.
Because of the airplane and other alleged violations, the campaign ended up $1.9 million over the legal limit on campaign spending by a primary candidate who accepted matching funds from the government, the FEC found.
Baran disagreed: ``If the commission had proceeded, we are absolutely confident we would have proven there was no violation of the law,'' he said.
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS PRESIDENTby CNB