Did Mitch McConnell Use Senate Employees for Oppo Research on Ashley Judd?

Ron Sachs/Cnp/ZUMAPress

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


A secret recording of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and aides discussing in February how they might attack actor/activist Ashley Judd, then a potential 2014 challenger to McConnell, attracted widespread attention after Mother Jones published it Tuesday morning. Much of the news coverage focused on the McConnell team’s comments about Judd’s religious views and her mental-health history. But the tape might raise ethics questions for McConnell and his staff.

Senate ethics rules prohibit Senate employees from participating in political activities while on government time. But the tape indicates that several of McConnell’s legislative aides, whose salaries are paid by the taxpayer, were involved with producing the oppo research on Judd that was discussed at the February 2 meeting. Here’s the relevant section of the transcript:

Presenter: So I’ll just preface my comments that this reflects the work of a lot of folks: Josh, Jesse, Phil Maxson, a lot of LAs, thank them three times*, so this is a compilation of work, all the way through. The first person we’ll focus on, Ashley Judd—basically I refer to her as sort of the oppo research situation where there’s a haystack of needles, just because truly, there’s such a wealth of material. [Laughter.]

Ah, you know Jesse slogged through her autobiography. She has innumerable video interviews, tweets, blog posts, articles, magazine articles.

The presenter was explaining that the opposition research on Judd was compiled by several people. “LAs” is congressional parlance for legislative assistants; one of the legislative assistants, Phil Maxson, gets his own shout-out. The question is whether Maxson and the other McConnell LAs were digging up material on Judd while on government time. If they were engaged in this research while on annual leave or vacation—or working outside Senate hours—they wouldn’t be violating Senate rules. But if this was done on Senate time, McConnell could have a problem.

[UPDATE: The Weekly Standard‘s Daniel Halper suggests that the aide in the transcription isn’t saying “thank them three times,” he’s saying “in their free time.” That’s plausible, and if it’s true, McConnell and his aides are in the clear. You can listen for yourself here. UPDATE 2: On even closer listen, “in their” isn’t plausible, but “free time” is. You should decide for yourself.]

Here’s how Tara Malloy, an expert on ethics rules at the Campaign Legal Center, described the issue in an email:

Any assessment under the Ethics rules would require some more facts—most particularly whether any official resources were used in connection to the conversation or oppo research, and/or whether the conversation or other activities took place on government property. In general, however, the ethics rules do not bar staffers from engaging in campaign activity provided they do it on their own time and do not involve government resources or property.

Here is the relevant excerpt from the Senate Ethics Manual:

As discussed more fully below, Senate Rule 41 prohibits Senate staff, with the exception of specified “political fund designees,” from handling federal campaign funds. Subject to that restriction, however, and as long as they do not neglect their official duties, Senate employees are free to engage in campaign activities on their own time, as volunteers or for pay, provided they do not do so in congressional offices or otherwise use official resources.  An employee’s “own time” includes time beyond regular working hours, any accrued annual leave, or non-government hours of a part-time employee. Staff may not be required to do political work as a condition of Senate employment. Just as Senate employees are free to campaign for their employing Members on their own time, they may also use their free time or, with the permission of their employing Members, reduce their Senate hours (with a commensurate reduction in pay) to campaign for presidential candidates, other federal candidates, or state or local aspirants. With respect to the question of leave time to perform campaign activities, it is the Committee’s understanding that the Senate does not recognize a “leave of absence.”

We asked Jesse Benton, McConnell’s campaign manager; Allison Moore, a spokeswoman for his Senate office; and Phil Maxson, the LA named on the tape, to explain whether the oppo work was done on Senate time, but they did not respond.

Guy Cecil, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is working to defeat McConnell, sent out a series of tweets on Tuesday noting this issue:

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate