By Kathleen Gray, Joe Swickard and Jim Schaefer, Detroit Free Press –
DETROIT — In announcing election fraud charges Thursday against four members of former U.S. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter’s congressional staff, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette blamed McCotter for running such a slipshod, leaderless operation that his staff “acted above the law, as if it didn’t apply to them.”
Schuette — like McCotter, a former Republican congressman — said McCotter was “asleep at the switch,” providing no direction to his district office staff in Livonia as they scrambled a day before the May 15 filing deadline for Congress to assemble petitions with the names of 1,800 voters in the district. The secretary of state found that just 244 were valid.
“They were more than just Keystone cops run amok,” Schuette said. In their report, his investigators described a “dysfunctional congressional staff that had completely lost its moral compass.”
Schuette charged the four staffers — Don Yowchuang, Paul Seewald, Mary M. Turnbull and Lorianne O’Brady — with a combined 13 felonies and 21 misdemeanors related to the fraudulent petitions. O’Brady is the only one not facing felony charges.
Yowchuang turned in multiple copies of some petitions and others that were doctored by cutting and pasting dates from other documents onto the petitions.
“This is not frat boys go to Washington. This is not about a garage band in D.C.,” Schuette said in an obvious dig at McCotter, known as much for his rock ’n’ roll riffs as anything he’s done in Congress.
McCotter resigned July 6 in the aftermath of the petition scandal. He released a statement Thursday, saying, “I thank the attorney general and his office for their earnest, thorough work on this investigation, which I requested, and their subsequent report. For my family and I, this closure commences our embrace of the enduring blessings of private life.”
Schuette said there was no evidence McCotter participated in petition fraud. He didn’t speculate on the reason why the staffers botched the signatures, but he said some details would come out at trial.
Details of the charges:
—Yowchuang, 33, of Farmington Hills was charged with 10 counts of election law forgery and one count of conspiracy to commit a legal act in an illegal manner, both five-year felonies. He also was charged with six counts of falsely signing a nominating petition, a misdemeanor with a penalty of up to 93 days in jail. He started work for McCotter in 2001, when McCotter was in the state Senate. Yowchuang most recently was deputy district director for McCotter, earning $72,833 a year.
—Seewald, 47, of Livonia was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit a legal act in an illegal manner and nine counts of falsely signing a nominating petition. He started work for McCotter in 1999, also when he McCotter was in the state Senate. Seewald was the congressional district director and earned $96,999 a year.
—Turnbull, 58, of Howell was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit a legal act in an illegal manner and one count of falsely signing a nominating petition. She began work for McCotter’s congressional staff in 2008 and previously worked for former U.S. Rep. Joe Knollenberg, a Bloomfield Township Republican. As a district representative, she earned $33,999 a year.
—O’Brady, 52, of Livonia was charged with five counts of falsely signing a nominating petition. She was hired onto McCotter’s staff in 2007 at a salary of $30,999.
Yowchuang, Seewald and O’Brady were charged in Livonia district court, and Turnbull was charged in Troy district court. All four, none of whom could be reached for comment by the Detroit Free Press, are expected to be arraigned Friday morning.
Schuette said there was evidence that McCotter’s campaign staff also doctored petitions in 2008, using copies of 2006 petitions to qualify McCotter for the ballot. The attorney general’s six-week investigation included interviews with 75 witnesses and examined emails, text messages and bank accounts.
The 2012 petitions were so sloppy that fraud was easily discovered by a part-time secretary of state employee.
The cut-and-paste job from one petition to another was so bad, Schuette said, “ it would make an elementary art teacher cringe … and gives Elmer’s glue a bad name.”
