During last night’s debate on South Dakota Public Television, moderator Stephanie Rissler cast the line Kristi Noem was hoping for about corruption and scandals, and Noem put her GOP gubernatorial primary opponent Marty Jackley on the hook:
“In EB5, the state oversite program, nobody went to jail. On Gear-Up, still, nobody’s been punished. When we talk about what’s been going on in Brookings with the Global Aquaponics scam—a con artist, Tobias Ritesman, held a fundraiser for Marty Jackley. Marty attended his phony groundbreaking for his phony project,” Noem says. “People lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Still, nobody’s been investigated and nobody’s been prosecuted. That needs to change in our state” [Lee Strubinger, “GOP Governor Candidates Spar over Transparency During SDPB TV Debate,” SDPB, 2018.05.30].
(You can read up on Ritesman’s fake fish farm fiasco here. Ritesman and Burns face federal charges of wire fraud and mail fraud; they have a June 12 deadline to reach a plea agreement, or they go jury trial June 26.)
Jackley didn’t handle the Ritesman accusation well:
During the debate, Jackley denied that [Ritesman] held a fundraiser for him.
“Congresswoman, he didn’t hold a fundraiser for me. I was at an event that he was at, and I did go to a ground breaking because that’s what important in South Dakota,” Jackley says. “When we have businesses expanding I think it’s important that we attend those [Strubinger, 2018.05.30].
Jackley erred in suggesting Ritesman had a business expanding, because about the only dirt that moved on the Ritesman project near Brookings were the shovelfuls Marty Jackley and other poobahs turned at the bogus June 2016 groundbreaking. Worse, the claim that Ritesman “didn’t hold a fundraiser” for Jackley looks somewhat fancifully parsiful when we look at the pre-primary campaign finance report for Friends of Marty Jackley:
Sometime between May 27 and October 28, 2017, Tobias Ritesman provided chow and venue worth $700 for a Jackley campaign event. Whatever that event was (and come on, when a candidate committee throws an event, is the committee ever not inviting attendees to write checks?), Ritesman wasn’t just at it; he was making it possible—i.e., holding it.
It’s bad enough for Team Jackley that Kristi Noem is affirming the complaints we Democrats have lodged for years about the Attorney General’s failure to tackle corruption in state government. It’s worse that she is smartly pinning the Global Aquaponics mess to that scam sheet. But now to top it off, Jackley is responding with claims that don’t address the actual corruption and misrepresent his own relationship with one of the key corruptificators.
Jackley fails to mention his”trusted” office had EXTENSIVE MONITORING OF EB5 WHILE FRAUD UNFOLDED, allowed Tidemann’s GOAC hearings give Rounds/Daugaard administrations an election year PASS, and tenderly let Joop off with a suspended imposition of sentence after churning $600M thru SD.
The Ritesmsn-Aquaponics fiasco lags in 3rd place (behind EB-5 and GEAR-UP) among the scandals because no one died as it came apart. The Zylstra-Kaiser episode is fresher and Noem did briefly allude to it last night which makes me wonder if she intends to give it more play in the final week.
It took a long time for the sparks to fly but it’s finally getting interesting.
Good grief, already.
These fake fish farm scams have been around for at least a couple of decades.
It doesn’t take a great amount of times to research scams like this, the state should have done a little more digging, instead they got scammed
Tangential: in December 2007, EB-5 czar Joop Bollen nixed a request for EB-5 funding from a tilapia farm proposed near Pierre.
Sorry to link to a rival blog, Cory, but …
“Tobias Ritesman didn’t hold a fundraiser for Jackley.”
http://dakotawarcollege.com/release-fact-check-jackley-donor-a-scam-artist-not-economic-developer/
“Jackley had zero involvement in the settlement terms or negotiation between Bryan Gortmaker and Laura Kaiser.”
http://dakotawarcollege.com/release-fact-check-jackley-rhetoric-contradicts-evidence-and-south-dakota-statute/
Apparently when Jackley gets backed into a corner, he just lies.
How willing are South Dakotans to accept a known scammer and liar in elected office? Guess that answer will be revealed very soon.
so.dakota has already elected a scammer & liar .he grins all the time and is an associate of another person who lied big time in the tax law debate . don’t forget that the former gov. appointed Jackley attorney general, who covered up for smilling mike & and drug out the whole affair to long .jackley’s biggest blunder was not demanding that Joop hand over the books he ran off with. these records could damn well incriminate the whole outfit.it may have saved Joop a big prison sentence that he deserves!someone needs to be held responsible the deaths of 7 people in this whole sorry mess!