Point of order, Mr. Speaker!
Last week, legislators on the House Select Committee on impeachment received a flood of calls from voters urging them to impeach our killer Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg. Friday evening, KSFY’s Austin Goss posted a transcript of a recording in which Angel Kane, boss at Ohio-based Grand Solutions Inc., tells her telemarketing crew that a governor running for President is involved in those calls:
Since then, Dakota News Now obtained a voicemail that raised suspicions among many lawmakers. The voicemail captures what appears to be a telemarketer employee who did not realize that they were still on the line.
“I don’t know. I was on the phone. I just gave him an update and the governor called. They’re going to call me back. The governor is actually involved in this so that is why it is more specific. But it is nice because this person is running for president, I don’t know if they’re running for Democrat or Republican, so they have a huge… budget for the Senate race, which is coming up in a couple months. So that is why we need to do a good job, okay?” [Austin Goss, “Voice Recording Raises Questions over Origin of Ravnsborg Telemarketing Campaign,” KSFY, 2022.01.28].
Goss posts the audio to YouTube:
Joe Sneve also got the recording from impeachment committee chairman and Speaker of the House Spencer Gosch (R-23/Glenham) and notes background chatter in the recording that establishes Kane made those statements in her call center while employees around her made calls pushing Ravnsborg’s impeachment.
In a clear conflict of interest, Attorney General Ravnsborg says he will investigate these pro-impeachment calls for potential criminal conduct:
Unmarked political communications, and interfering with a state legislative process, both carry possible criminal penalties.
“We take the protection and privacy of all legislators very seriously,” said Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg, in regards to the telemarketing campaign. “Since I have taken office in January of 2019, I have received similar complaints of anonymous robocalls, robo-texts, and/or death threats against legislators. We will investigate these new allegations of potential criminal conduct as we have done in the past… vigorously” [Goss, 2022.01.28].
Chairman Gosch says he will lead discussion of this intrusion of telemarketing in the impeachment committee’s work:
The committee, next scheduled to convene Monday, is expected to expand the scope of its work to now include determining who hired Ohio-based Grand Solutions, Inc.
“We need to know if anyone was using their official position to do anything, to change or to corrupt the matter, or to influence this in a negative way, because corruption is clearly against the law,” Gosch said Thursday, adding multiple state laws could have been violated [Joe Sneve, “Recording Signals Tampering with Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg Impeachment Process,” Sioux Falls Argus Leader, 2022.01.28].
“Corruption is against the law,” says Spencer Gosch, who cast one of his first major votes in the Legislature to repeal the Anti-Corruption Act in 2017 and who that same Session voted against an ethics commission.
Before we can get to the question of whether there’s any corruption or lawbreaking in organizing phone calls to lobby legislators, we must get to the question of whether the House Select Committee on impeachment can get to that question. The answer is why I’m going to shout, Point of order, Mr. Speaker!
The House Select Committee on Investigation is meeting not as part of the 2022 Session of the South Dakota Legislature but as a continuation of the 2021 Second Special Session of the South Dakota Legislature. That 2021 Second Special Session was convened solely “to investigate and evaluate whether the conduct of Jason Ravnsborg, Attorney General of the State of South Dakota, surrounding the death of Joe Boever, involved impeachable offenses, pursuant to Article XVI, Section 3 of the Constitution of the State of South Dakota, and if so, to conduct further impeachment proceedings thereon and legislate on matters involving the attorney general’s office.” The Select Committee exists under the authority of 2021i House Resolution 7001, which restricts the committee examining records, witnesses and facts relevant and material to “the conduct of Jason Ravnsborg… surrounding the death of Joe Boever.” 2021i HR 7001 limits the committee’s final report and recommendations to whether the House should issue articles of impeachment, how such articles should be worded, and how the House should manage its impeachment case in the Senate.
Not one word of the proclamation authorizing the Special Session on impeachment or the resolution authorizing the activities of this committee allows this committee to investigate violations of campaign finance law or other acts of corruption by any elected official.
Any legislator who attempts to raise questions about the Governor’s alleged involvement in a telemarketing scheme to lobby legislators will be violating a House Resolution, the Special Session Proclamation, and the South Dakota Constitution and should be gaveled down immediately.
An extraordinary Special Session committee granted extraordinary subpoena power must not attempt to extend that extraordinary power beyond its wisely limited scope. I don’t know who can properly and legally investigate this lobbying by telemarketing—the Attorney General can’t investigate alleged crimes affecting his own political well-being; I don’t know who can appoint a special prosecutor in South Dakota, but in this case, it sure can’t be the Governor who is alleged to have bankrolled this telemarketing campaign; the Secretary of State has no campaign finance cops; we might have to appeal to the U.S. Attorney to investigate the calls for some sort of interstate communications violation—but it most definitely is not the House Select Committee on Investigation empaneled by the ongoing 2021 Second Special Session in the impeachment of Jason Ravnsborg.
At this point it looks like Rich Benda and Eric Westerhuis would have gotten away with the money they stole, right?
“Corruption is against the law.”
So, don’t allow your investigation to be corrupted by externalities, Speaker Gosch. You’re the one in control. Problem solved.
Gosch in charge might be the problem is identified. Magats have no clews or desires to investigate other magats. and it is a systemic problem from top to bottom.
South Dakota legislators on the House Select Committee on impeachment don’t know enough to hang up when getting an unknown robo-call?
Where is this happening?
Junior High teen talk?
I read a few lines of this story to my wife this morning and here are her responses:
“…Angel Kane, boss at Ohio-based Grand Solutions Inc., tells her telemarketing crew that a governor running for President.”
Hahahahahahahahahaha, hahahahahahahahaha, hahaha, oh my side hurts.
““Corruption is against the law,” says Spencer Gosch”
Hahahahahahahahahaha, hahahahaha. Stop it. I can’t take any more. Hahaha.
To our self righteous, evangelical, governor I would like to say, as my tenth grade bible class teacher often reminded me from Numbers 32.23, “…be sure your sin will find you out.”
And finally it is stih like this that makes me want Noem to be governor forever. You can’t make this stih up!
There is nothing more incompetent than the South Dakota Legislature. Or perhaps the legislative leaders are in on the corruption. Whatever it is, it’s been that way for a long time. And I expect it will continue. I supported term limits to solve the problem. It hasn’t. People need to realize that a one-party system leads to corruption and arrogance. DaveFN has some sage advise, but of course, the legislative clowns can’t be bothered to do their job. It makes sense Noem did this. Impeach her for it, but first get to work on the job at hand: getting rid of Killer Ravnesborg. Then they can get rid of Noem. But, they don’t have the morals or courage to do the right thing. It wouldn’t be the Republican way.
From Austin Goss’ KSFY story – Unmarked political communications, and interfering with a state legislative process, both carry possible criminal penalties.
That is an assumption by the reporter that needs some basis in reality.
If someone phones in a bomb threat, and the legislature and visitors exit the capitol for investigators to search the building, that’s a clear case of interfering with a state legislative process. So is 2,500 Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol, threatening the lives of Vice President Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, smashing property, injuring police and attempting to steal the electoral college ballots to halt the transfer of power to Joe Biden. But phoning voters to lobby their legislators on an issue (impeach Jason Ravnsborg) is not. If I’m wrong, please cite the statute that covers an organized, phone-based effort to lobby legislators.
That’s right. It does not exist.
How about making “unmarked political communications?” What is the statute involved for the Ohio phone bank in this case and what is the maximum penalty? Must the phoners’ message include a disclaimer even if no officially filed campaign organization paid for the calls? Can Gosch and the other fools subpoena the management of Grand Solutions Inc. to fly to Pierre and testify under oath? Gee, and then what?
This is a rabbit hole that is completely off-subject and a waste of the committee’s time. They need to stay focused on their work.
Using this phone bank was nutty. I can’t understand why an official investigation is warranted, other than personal curiosity. I understand why Ravnsborg wants these kinds of distractions to muddy the waters and allow his spineless pals in the legislature off the hook and vote against filing for action from the Senate. The entitled runt wants to get re-elected and he wants to increase his standing and retirement payments in the Army Reserves. As if … nothing … ever … happened.
Well…Speaker Gosch is confused and the whole situation has him flummoxed. No news there. The Governor is apparently in contact wuth the administrator of the Ohio based call center yet she claims no knowledge of the conspiracy. No news there, just more deceit and doubletalk from the Governor.
For authoritarian personalities laws are only things/tools meant to be imposed/used upon others. They can’t even imagine them being applied them to themselves, let alone engage in doing so.