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News Stating the Obvious Stating The Obvious It's Jake Knotts' Party and He'll Cry If He Wants To!
News Stating the Obvious Stating The Obvious It's Jake Knotts' Party and He'll Cry If He Wants To!
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29 June 2011
(Video provided courtesy of Ron Kelderman)
Jake Knotts really knows how to spoil a fun party! Yeah, sure, most of SC Representative Kenny Bingham's and SC Senator Ronnie Cromer's reporting on legislative accomplishments was "feel good" stuff, but that and getting to network and meet with friends was the intended nature of the event--more of a "social" than a true newsworthy discussion of the issues. Unfortunately, the mood was ruined yet again.
The Lexington County GOP's "Third Annual Legislative BBQ" was held Monday night (June 27, 2011) at Hudson's BBQ on Hwy. 378 in Lexington. The event was open to the public and attended by many of the GOP regulars from Lexington County. The food was excellent as usual but the unintended "entertainment" this time was even better than the show put on back on September 28, 2010.
The meal was free this time to party members and seems to have been the deciding factor for at least one attendee. Like a scene out of Jurassic Park, I felt a peculiar subsonic rumbling in the building and ripples started appearing in my iced tea. I thought we were on the verge of another mild earthquake until I looked up to see SC Senator Jake Knotts maneuvering a sagging paper plate piled high with BBQ and collard greens to a table nearby.
The Lexington County Republican Party Pariah had at long last decided to attend an event. I was surprised to see him there. He had been snubbing us for some time now. I thought that, perhaps, somewhere deep in his racist, RINO heart that he had forgiven the Lexington GOP. I was wrong, though, and truly had no idea how much entertainment he was about to provide.
After Bingham and Cromer had finished talking, County Chairman Rich Bolen was gracious enough to ask other legislators if they wanted an opportunity to speak. Mac Toole declined but Jake Knotts apparently had something to say. According to people seated near him at another table, Knotts was gruffly mumbling and making comments the whole time critical of the two speakers. As the speeches progressed, Knotts seemed to be getting more and more irritated and his mood was apparent as you can see in the accompanying video of the speech embedded above.
I expected Kenny Bingham to better behave himself this time and he did. Cromer has never been anything exciting so there was no worry there. They basically bragged about all they had done or had made efforts to accomplish. Between the two presentations, the "elephant in the room" was the fact that, except for a few high pressure, high profile bills, the SC Senate had (perhaps in collusion with SC House members) blocked most of the reform measures that the SC House had passed with ease.
Despite the history of Jake Knotts who is widely known (internationally now!) for shooting off his mouth, often in very vulgar displays of loud, obnoxious behavior (one friend reports easily hearing him from far off in public buildings spewing profanities in endless harangues on several occasions) I really expected Knotts to stick to accomplishments and significant legislation that had been passed. One would think that since he is running for re-election, he'd attempt to stay upbeat and positive. Unfortunately for him, most of the legislation that has passed in the SC Senate recently have been signature issues of his longtime political rival, now Governor, Nikki Haley, and passed due to intense pressure from the public.
There was one piece of legislation that Knotts owned the bragging rights to: he successfully pushed through a bill making collard greens the official state vegetable. Of course, Knotts needed the help of a nine-year-old girl to do that. As it turned out, if Knotts had had the help of a nine-year-old on his campaign finance accounting--especially regarding the ethical side of it to remind him not to steal and lie--perhaps he wouldn't have been reprimanded by the SC Senate and subsequently censured--again--by the Lexington County GOP.
When Knotts took the the microphone to make his defense, he immediately went on the offensive--typical Jake Knotts' bullying behavior. He made a denigrating reference to SC Senator Cromer having worked with Nikki Haley. He clearly did not like that. He then insulted the SC House members' for his having to "clean up" all those bills they passed in a hurry and indicating that Rep. Bingham should have taken more time on them--perhaps Knotts wanted them to move at his own slug-like pace.
Knotts then went to work explaining how Governor Haley was involved in a conspiracy to compromise the integrity of SLED and referred to a letter (posted here on 06/23/2011 http://lexingtonchronicle.com/) that looks to do nothing but control costs during the transition period in which outgoing officials have in the past been known to spend lavishly.
Then it was time for Knotts to get to the real meat of the issue: the SC Senate Ethics Committee reprimand and, by direct implication, the recent censure by the Lexington County GOP (@5:16 on the video). And that, dear reader, turned out to be the topic de jour for Senator Knotts.
There must have been quite a sense of satisfaction for those in the audience who had voted for the censure. They had, with their votes, forced an entrenched and corrupt politician to talk about the last thing he, as a candidate up for re-election, should want to talk about: a reprimand for his violating campaign finance laws from September of 2010. He could have been/should have been kicked out of the SC Senate for violating the law. Violations of a similar magnitude now have Lt. Governor Ard facing criminal indictments which could result in his losing his office and real jail time.
The slap on the wrist handed out by Knotts' buddies in the SC Senate was intended to sweep the whole matter under the rug as much as possible. Enough good people in the Lexington County GOP, however, felt the need to explicitly state their disapproval of his actions as well as the preferential treatment he received from his colleagues. In fact, the censure called for an audit of each member and for a change in the law to cause the members of the General Assembly to also be treated equally under the law for crimes that would result in regular working people being incarcerated for a long time.
Knotts started off his defense by claiming that he got a "clean bill of health" from the SC Senate Ethics Committee. Such an absurd claim is not at all apparent from simply reading the reprimand. It is replete with accounts of his gross and criminally fraudulent acts as well as being liberally doused with documentation of his sloppy record keeping. He repeated his "no money missing" defense despite the fact that he withdrew money without documenting it. The reprimand only indicated that there was nothing they could point to in proving that he spent the money on himself. The documented offenses of sloppy record-keeping, however, certainly raise the suspicion of his spending some of the money on himself.
The worst offenses he committed were obviously the fraudulent acts enabling him to take in nearly $25,000 to help beat a strong opponent in the 2008 primary. In the section "Findings of Fact" #5 from page three of the reprimand it states:
" . . . Senator Knotts accepted several campaign contribution checks where the face amount of each check exceeded the statutory $1,000 limit. Senator Knotts reported these contributions on his Campaign Disclosure Reports in a manner that was inconsistent with the name of the account holder listed on the check. For example, in one instance, Senator Knotts accepted and deposited a campaign contribution check in the amount of $3,000 from a corporation. Senator Knotts explained that he was told that $1,000 of the contribution was from the corporation and the other $2,000 represented personal contributions from two of the corporation's shareholders. Senator Knotts reported the contributions accordingly even though the check was drawn upon the corporation's checking account. In another instance, Senator Knotts accepted a $2,000 check from a[n] LLC and reported the contribution as two separate personal contributions from two of the LLC's members ($1,000 each). Subsequently, these two LLC members made separate $1,000 campaign contributions from their personal accounts to Senator Knotts during the same election cycle. Senator Knotts reported one of those personal contributions as being from another person residing at the same address."
Under "Conclusions of Law" on page 5, item 3:
" . . . S.C. Code Ann. 8-13-1344(D) (Supp. 2009) provides that a person may not, directly or indirectly, reimburse another person for a contribution to a candidate . . . Because the law prohibits a person from reimbursing another person for a campaign contribution made on their behalf, except in the limited case of immediate family members, a person cannot make a contribution to a candidate on behalf of another person. The Committee concludes that the instrument upon which the contribution is made, and not the intent of the actual contribution of a campaign contribution can only be the name of the account holder listed on the check . . . The Committee finds that Senator Knotts violated these provisions by accepting $23,850 of contributions in excess of the statutory limits from 29 individuals, entities, and organizations during his 2008 Primary Election cycle and $1,000 of contributions in excess of the statutory limit from one entity during his 2008 General Election cycle."
Knotts tried to explain that he made an innocent mistake. There is nothing innocent going on here. It is obvious that in accepting checks in one name and recording them as being from someone else, Knotts engaged in criminal fraud on multiple occasions in addition to the litany of other violations of law where he, among many other violations, took money without recording where it came from and withdrawing and spending the money in violation of the law.
Again claiming "bookkeeping errors," Knotts gave the appearance of an overgrown kid caught by his parents and attempting to lie his way out of it. In his bombastic, halting style, he attempted to minimize the reprimand by claiming (@6:06 in the above linked video) that "the thing they hit [him] on" was an incident involving a check from a man and wife for $2000.00. That's a lie. As mentioned under the "Conclusions of Law, that exact situation is allowed under the law--and he knows that! He was not reprimanded for that by the ethics committee. He also briefly mentioned receiving too much money from a corporation and claims to have returned the excess (probably doing so after the reprimand instructed him to).
The truth of the matter, as quoted from the reprimand above, is that he received $24,850 in fraudulently recorded checks from 30 individuals. To put it bluntly, Jake Knotts, once again, lied to our faces or, as someone interpreted the matter in language Knotts himself might understand, "Jake Knotts is a lying sack of ----!"
Strangely, Knotts then claimed that there were plenty of other SC Senators who received too much money from the Senate Republican Caucus implying that they were guilty of the same thing that he was reprimanded and censured for--but he didn't name any names. Knotts declared proudly, "I didn't push for them to be charged for an ethics violation."
He went on to implicitly deny that the reprimand had been a slap on the wrist by claiming that if he'd done anything besides those sorts of "bookkeeping" type violations, that the full Senate Committee would have "chopped him up."
But it's gets even deeper(@8:55 on the video):
"I'm going to tell you somethin' people: this ol' boy heah is as honest as the day is long. And I ain't worried about NO-body going against my reputation.
"And, uh, I'm sorry that that happened but, uh, I'm not the only one up there that's done that. There's a LOT of things they found that was going on like that.
"And I just happened to be the only one that was STUPID enough, but proud enough, to go down myself because I had a CD that I had taken out five years previously that had a 5.75% interest rate on it . . . And I went to the ethics committee and said, 'Listen, I've got my CD come due and I worked it out with the bank and I paid off all my-my-my bills and I've got this much interest I need to report. How do I do it because it's over a thousand dollars.' The fact was, it was right at $18,000 . . . "
In fact, though he earlier attempts to give the impression that he turned himself in, he was actually caught, according to the reprimand, page 1, in a routine audit of the April 2010 Campaign Disclosure Report when "it appeared that Senator Knotts had insufficient campaign funds on hand to generate the amount of interest that he had reported." He was also required to turn over the records he claims that he voluntarily took to the ethics committee.
There was a discrepancy of $43,900 when Knotts sought the answer on how to report interest earned on a certificate of deposit. Knotts may have been seeking to find out how to properly report the interest but it is beyond the bounds of belief to think that he had any idea that asking that single question would lead to his getting into this much trouble. As demonstrated by the many lies minimizing his criminal behavior in the video above, Knotts is nowhere near being contrite and is, indeed, very defensive and defiant. His bullying, corrupt attitude was showing once again.
Knotts ended his self-indulgent tirade by once again attacking the ethics of the SC House members (who, in all honesty, probably deserve such attacks--as does the SC Senate--but Knotts is hardly in a position to be casting stones). He then offered to answer questions anyone has at any time:
"If any of y'all got any questions about--asking me about--my ethics, I stand free to talk to you at any time. Don't ask a question that you don't want the answer to because I ain't gonna lie to you. There're some things my wife won't ask me because they--she--don't wanna know the truth."
Well, we have the proof above that he obviously and routinely lies to us but that last remark was not really a great way to instill confidence. It makes one wonder what he was thinking. Unfortunately for him, NO ONE seems to keep their mouths shut indefinitely and there are plenty of stories going around Lexington County about his other illegal activities.
Jake Knotts is the curse that keeps on giving. The best way for us to un-elect him is to get him to keep showing up to lie like this directly in the face of the obvious and documented truth. The voters are, I'm sure, a lot smarter than he is and they are certainly a lot smarter than he gives them credit for.
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