Release: South Dakota Republican Party points out it raised the flag on Dem financial practices in 2017

From the South Dakota Republican Party, a press release has been issued pointing out how the GOP had raised the flag on the practices that are at issue in the Federal Election Commission’s Audit:

SDGOP blew whistle on South Dakota Democrats laundering millions for Hillary

In response to the announcement of an August 7, 2019 audit by the Federal Elections Commission of the South Dakota Democrat Party, and subsequent news story by the Rapid City Journal, South Dakota Republican Party Chairman Dan Lederman offered the following statement in response.

“We told you so,” Lederman noted.  “In November of 2017, the South Dakota Republican Party sent out a press release noting that the Hillary Clinton Presidential Campaign used the South Dakota Democratic Party chaired by Ann Tornberg as a way to get around campaign finance limits.  According to reports filed by South Dakota Democrats with the Federal Elections Commission at the time, South Dakota Democrats allowed the Clinton campaign to directly funnel over $2.25 million through the State.”

“Now, we’re reading in the Rapid City Journal that ‘disbursements were understated by $2,500,147 during the 2015 and 2016 calendar years,’ raising the question of exactly how much Democrats were laundering for Hillary’s campaign?”

At the time, Lederman noted, the GOP called for “South Dakota Democrat leadership to publicly disclose exactly what the terms were of the financial arrangements with the Clinton campaign in light of receiving virtually no funds, and spending almost no money on joint activities, which a former national Democrat Party Chairwoman claimed was an “unethical” arrangement.

“We knew it was unethical 2 years ago. With the announcement of the FEC’s probe of the South Dakota Democrat party,” Lederman said, “now the big question is whether the Democrat Party’s actions were illegal.”

According to a Politico report in 2017, the state parties received little of the funds raised, and the Bernie Sanders campaign criticized the financial arrangement and alleged that Clinton’s campaign was “looting funds meant for the state parties to skirt fundraising limits on her presidential campaign.”

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