Tuesday, May 22, 2012 • TEAM LaMalfa allegedly caught conspiring to violate federal law, attribute attack website to another candidate

Publisher’s note: This story originally appeared in the Tuesday, May 22, 2012 edition of the Lassen County Times.

This morning the attack website posted by Doug LaMalfa’s campaign and illegally attributed to another candidate in CA CD 01 race has suddenly been pulled down from the Internet.

The site, which has included an extensive Google Advertising buy, was built by LaMalfa Chief of Staff and Campaign Manager Mark Spannegal, but then falsely and illegally attributed to be paid for by another candidate in the race.

In posting the site, the LaMalfa campaign allegedly has willfully broken numerous federal laws, as well as committed slander and libel against Sam Aanestad.

“This is a violation of so many federal laws, it’s hard to say which one is worse,” said Aanestad spokesman Mark Standriff. “And it’s quite possible that, if multiple individuals were involved, it is conspiracy to violate federal law, which makes this all-the-more serious. Future discovery will uncover the full facts on why LaMalfa’s campaign felt it was necessary to break the law in order to try and win this campaign.”

The website originally posted a disclaimer stating, “Free Thinkers for Dacquisto.” Last week, Dacquisto angrily denied any involvement in the site and demanded its true creators take it down. The false Dacquisto site disclaimer was removed and the site now contains no official campaign disclaimer.

To determine the source of the violation, the Aanestad campaign filed a lawsuit and subpoenaed records from the site host Wix.com. Those records were delivered by Wix.com to the Aanestad campaign, showing the site was registered through GoDaddy.com on April 18 by Spannegal, and paid for by a Golden 1 Visa Credit Card, presumably belonging to Spannegal.

This action represents an illegal failure to disclose campaign communication by the LaMalfa Congressional Committee, an illegal independent expenditure by the LaMalfa Committee on behalf of Michael Dacquisto, fraud by the LaMalfa Committee in disclaiming its own campaign communication to that of another candidate, and very possibly conspiracy by multiple individuals to willfully break federal law.

FED Code of Federal Regulations, section 110.11 clearly requires disclosure of:
(1) All public communications, as defined in 11 CFR 100.26, made by a political committee; electronic mail of more than 500 substantially similar communications when sent by a political committee; and all Internet websites of political committees available to the general public.

(2) All public communications, as defined in 11 CFR 100.26, by any person that expressly advocate the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate.

In addition to the alleged numerous federal campaign law violations, Dr. Aanestad has contacted an attorney regarding possible legal action against LaMalfa’s chief of staff for libelous statements regarding his professional qualifications.