January 10, 2005

Statement of Derek Cressman, Director of TheRestofUs.org, Calling for Impeachment Investigation Into California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley

“I commend the Joint Legislative Audit Committee for beginning the process of investigating whether or not the Secretary of State has abused the public trust by misusing our taxpayer dollars to further his own political career.

It is critical to the process that the Committee’s conduct investigative hearings where legislators can call witnesses under power of subpoena. We need to get to the bottom of this.

In addition to the work of this committee, the Assembly should go beyond the issues raised today and investigate a troubling pattern of allegations which, when taken collectively, suggest that Kevin Shelley’s actions both as a candidate and an officeholder may rise to the level of misconduct in office. These allegations include:

1) Reports of money laundering in his campaign, including allegations that funds from public grants arranged by Kevin Shelley while he was in the Assembly were diverted from a San Francisco non-profit group into Shelley’s campaign for Secretary of State.

2) Use of his state office and staff to conduct campaign fundraising.

There are reportedly at least eight investigations of Mr. Shelley’s activities by various agencies, including the FBI. These investigations are appropriately private, and Mr. Shelley should be presumed innocent until proven otherwise of any criminal conduct. However, Californians deserve public hearings to shed light on these allegations even if no criminal charges are filed.

It is unclear whether or not Mr. Shelley was aware any of the above incidents or merely failed in his duty to adequately oversee his campaign, his office, and the federal HAVA funds. But either complicity with wrongdoing or inept management could be viewed as official misconduct of Kevin Shelley’s responsibilities to the citizens of California. The time has come to investigate whether the Assembly should pursue impeachment.”

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TheRestofUs.org is a nonpartisan political watchdog dedicated to alerting citizens to the problems of big money in politics.