While Michele Bachmann has been calling on the media to investigate suspected “anti-American” members of Congress and who they associate with, she’s had little to say about her own personal and financial association with convicted felon, campaign contributor and Tom Petters associate Frank Vennes Jr.
Bachmann has refused repeated requests from Minnesota Independent for further clarification of her relationship with Vennes, which makes for a curious nexus of campaign financing, presidential pardons, evangelical ministries and multibillion-dollar Ponzi schemes.
Bachmann wrote a letter of recommendation in December 2007 for a presidential pardon of Vennes for federal money laundering, cocaine distribution and illegal firearms sales convictions. Vennes pleaded guilty and no contest to the charges in 1987 and was sentenced to five years in prison, which he served in Sandstone Federal Correctional Facility in Sandstone, MN.
Six months after Bachmann recommended Vennes for a pardon, Vennes and his wife, Kimberly, who are not constituents of Bachmann’s, dumped $9,200 into Bachmann’s re-election campaign. The Venneses already were among Bachmann’s top individual campaign contributors when Bachmann solicited the pardon, having contributed $18,200 to her campaign committees between 2005-2007. Vennes’ brother and his wife, Greg and Stephanie Vennes, have contributed an additional $8,400 to Bachmann since 2005. And Vennes’ personal attorney, C. Craig Howse, has donated $5,000 to Bachmann’s campaign funds since 2007.
Bachmann was highly complimentary of Vennes in her letter of recommendation, which referred to her “personal” relationship with him but not her financial one:
“As a U.S. Representative, I am confident of Mr. Vennes’ successful rehabilitation and that a pardon will be good for the neediest of society,” Bachmann wrote to the U.S. Office of Pardon Attorney. “Mr. Vennes is seeking a pardon so that he may be further used to help others. As I know from personal experience, Mr. Vennes has used his business position and success to fund hundreds of nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping the neediest in our society.”
In addition, Bachmann noted that Vennes needed a pardon because he “still encounters the barriers of his past and especially in the area of finance loan documents.”
Bachmann has refused to explain what the finance loan documents of Vennes’ were that she referred to in her letter.
On Sept. 24, Vennes’ Shorewood home was raided in connection with the multibillion-dollar Tom Petters financial investigation. According to the federal search warrant, Vennes was alleged to have hauled in more than $28 million in commissions for his role in luring five investors to pony up $1.2 billion in Petters’ alleged giant Ponzi scheme.
Eight days later on Oct. 2, Bachmann withdrew her letter of recommendation for Vennes’ pardon and, her chief of staff claims, donated one of Petters’ campaign contributions to an unspecified charity.
“I had known Mr. Vennes for some time and was familiar with his good works with local charity organizations,” Bachmann wrote to the Office of Pardon Attorney. “Like so many others, I was under the impression that he had turned his life around and was seeking to do the right thing by those less fortunate. Regrettably, it now appears that I may have too hastily accepted his claims of redemption and I must withdraw my previous letter.”
Vennes had not been charged with a crime when Bachmann yanked her pardon recommendation and washed her hands of some of Vennes’ campaign cash; as of October 21, he still has not been charged, although his assets were frozen by a federal judge and large amounts of cash, gems, artwork and coins seized from his home.
Bachmann’s withdrawal of her pardon request raises many questions: Why did Bachmann bail on her friend and benefactor before he was even charged, let alone convicted? Have federal investigators talked to Bachmann about Frank Vennes, and if not, should they?
Of course, it could just be that Bachmann was protecting her own political hide by cutting and running from Vennes, regardless of his guilt or innocence.
Bachmann was not any more forthcoming in an interview Oct. 19 with WCCO’s Esme Murphy, who sprung a question to the 6th District Republican about her relationship with Vennes.
“When the Tom Petters affair came open, and Frank may have a part in that affair, it wasn’t appropriate for me to recommend a pardon anymore,” Bachmann nervously explained, as footage of Petters and the raid on his house rolled behind them. “And so my office issued a letter, and we pulled that pardon back because we don’t know what the answers are right now about his involvement with Tom Petters.”
Bachmann told Murphy she met Vennes through his work with Teen Challenge, an evangelical Christian residential treatment program for troubled youth. Teen Challenge recently was forced to lay off 22 employees because of losses from its $5.7 million investments in Petters’ businesses.
Bachmann made no mention to Murphy of the Vennes family’s tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions she’s received. And Bachmann has refused to respond to questions about the status of the Vennes family contributions that she did not donate to charity.
http://minnesotaindependent.com/14009/michele-bachmann%E2%80%99s-call-for-investigations-of-congress-raises-questions-about-her-ties-to-petters-associate
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