FBI Conducts Search Of Michele Bachmann Ex-Staffer’s Home
This can’t be good for her re-election campaign:
FBI officials executed a search warrant at former state Sen. Kent Sorenson’s home two weeks ago and confiscated computers and other materials connected to presidential campaign politics, his lawyer told The Des Moines Register today.
“We were not notified that he was the target of any investigation,” attorney Theodore Sporer told the Register. “They took computers and things that would be used to verify or validate communications with presidential entities.”
Earlier this year, a report from a state special investigator suggested that two presidential campaigns – those of Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul – may have violated federal election laws by skirting rules to funnel money to Sorenson for campaign work.
The Register spoke briefly with Sorenson this morning but he declined to comment publicly about the matter. An unsourced report about FBI activity at the Sorenson family’s home was first posted today by Robert Wenzel, a libertarian economist who runs the Economic Policy Journal.
“It wasn’t a ‘raid,’” Sporer told the Register. “They executed a search warrant that, frankly, we anticipated was coming.”
The FBI on Wednesday, Nov. 20 were at Sorenson’s home for several hours and took computers belonging to his children, as well, Sporer said. “I assume it’s just kind of a dragnet to sweep for anything they could possibly find,” he said. “They’re very thorough.”
The FBI had talked to Sorenson once earlier this year, with his lawyer present. This afternoon, the FBI in Omaha, which also serves Iowa, referred the Register’s questions about this case to the U.S. Department of Justice. A justice department spokesman, Peter Carr, said he doesn’t have “any publicly available information to provide at this time.”
Sorenson, a Republican from Warren County, resigned from the Iowa Senate in October in the wake of ethics questions about his conduct during the 2012 Iowa caucuses.
