The Stupidest Scandal: How a $19K lectern stole the present

THE FALCON IN THE ROOM: After the discharge of a legislative audit report on April 15, the governor lastly deigned to permit the media to {photograph} her high-dollar lectern.

Editor’s be aware: Matt Campbell, the lead writer of this piece, can be a key participant within the story itself. The lawyer behind the Blue Hog Report weblog, Campbell submitted a Freedom of Data Act request final summer season that first revealed a mysterious $19,000 cost from Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ workplace to an organization owned by a buddy of the governor. A subsequent FOIA request confirmed the expenditure was for the now-infamous lectern. For simplicity’s sake, this text refers to Campbell — who’s now an investigative reporter for the Arkansas Occasions — in third particular person.

The irony of Lecterngate is that no person would ever have identified a factor about it had Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders not labored so onerous to cover different info from the general public. 

Within the spring and summer season of 2023, the Arkansas State Police started withholding data on the place the governor was flying on a state-owned airplane, who was going along with her and the way a lot it was all costing taxpayers. Such information had always been publicly available under the state Freedom of Information Act. However after Sanders took workplace, Arkansas State Police attorneys started denying FOIA requests about her flights, citing security considerations for the governor and her household. (Safety considerations usually aren’t thought of a sound FOIA exemption.)

In June, Sanders and others took a trip to Europe for the Paris Air Show, with stopovers in England, Germany and Italy. After the state police refused to reveal the price of sending deputies on the commerce mission, Blue Hog Report blogger Matt Campbell filed a lawsuit for the records in early September. 

Campbell could have had the legislation on his facet, however the governor and her allies had the ability to vary it, or attempt to. Inside days, Sanders called a special session of the Arkansas Legislature to rewrite the Arkansas FOIA, lengthy hailed as one of many strongest state authorities transparency legal guidelines within the nation. 

By the point lawmakers convened Sept. 11, Sanders was pushing a bill that would have allowed the governor and other top state officials to essentially operate in the dark. 

Authorities companies would have been capable of conceal deliberative paperwork and communications, which means something concerning choices not but made. In different phrases, Arkansans would have the precise to know concerning the workings of their authorities solely after the very fact.

In response to this broad assault on transparency, Campbell began tweeting examples of information that would be exempt from public disclosure beneath the proposed legislation. Amongst them was a $19,029 expenditure on the governor’s workplace’s state-issued bank card on June 12 to an organization owned by Virginia Beckett, a D.C.-area occasions supervisor and a buddy of Sanders.

BROUGHT IT ON HERSELF: If Gov. Sarah Sanders had not pushed for a broad invoice that may have gutted Arkansas FOIA for constitutional officers, this tweet possible by no means occurs and Lecterngate stays hidden.

Finally, Sanders’ ambitions to gut the FOIA had to be scaled back in the face of bipartisan opposition. The particular session ended a couple of days later, after legislators handed a narrower FOIA exemption that hid solely data associated to the governor’s safety element and journey (along with a separate bill giving a tax cut to upper-income Arkansans). However the governor’s energy seize had stirred up discontent amongst some Republican lawmakers that lingered lengthy after the session was over — and centered new public consideration on her spending.

Shortly after that tweet, Campbell heard by means of the grapevine that the $19,029 buy was for “a podium.” (To set the semantic report straight: Technically, a lectern is the factor you stand behind whereas talking, whereas a podium is one thing you stand on, although lecterns are also known as podiums.) A follow-up FOIA request turned up an bill from Beckett Occasions for a “39-inch Customized Falcon Podium.” Falcon-style lecterns, which have a modern, hourglass-esque profile, are patterned off a design created by the White House under George W. Bush and have been utilized by presidents ever since.

On the bill was a handwritten be aware: “To be reimbursed –LH.” Unbeknownst to the governor’s workers, nevertheless, a state employee had already provided Campbell with a copy of the Beckett invoice, without the handwritten note, a day earlier.

As reporters started asking why the governor paid a lot for a chunk of furnishings, the governor’s workplace went on the offensive. “These determined radical left keyboard warriors unfold outright lies and attempt to manufacture an issue the place one doesn’t exist,” Sanders spokeswoman Alexa Henning said at the time. Any points with the acquisition stemmed from an “accounting error,” and the Republican Social gathering of Arkansas “reimbursed” the state for the expense, Henning stated.

So it had — but it did so on Sept. 14, three months after the payment to Beckett Events, but just three days after Campbell began asking questions about it. “To be reimbursed” was written on the bill solely after the verify arrived from the Republican Social gathering in September, as emails from a state company quickly revealed. (The “LH” on the be aware seems to check with Laura Hamilton, an govt assistant within the governor’s workplace.)

These particulars and others had been corroborated by the account of an anonymous whistleblower who stepped forward in late September. A former state worker, she claimed to have firsthand data of how folks within the governor’s workplace, together with Henning, tried to maintain data buried. By the tip of September, state Sen. Jimmy Hickey (R-Texarkana) introduced he was asking the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee to look into both the purchase of the lectern itself and any records newly rendered secret by Sanders’ FOIA rollback passed during the special session.

PEOPLE OVER PARTY: Republican state Sen. Jimmy Hickey requested the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee to audit the governor’s workplace in October.

Lecterngate was national news by October, and the governor’s workplace’s surly, dismissive denials solely added gasoline to the hearth. Purple herrings quickly spawned: Did the lectern even exist? Did the $19,000 go elsewhere? Some thought the cash could have coated the price of a jaunt to England for Sanders and her associates throughout final summer season’s journey to Europe, or maybe first-class aircraft tickets for the governor’s youngsters. Refined theorists thought of the chance that Virginia Beckett and her enterprise companion had been paid not for a lectern, however to rearrange a quiet assembly between Sanders and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin to hash out plans for a potential 2024 Republican presidential ticket.

The solutions remained hidden, as did the lectern itself: Although it was bought from the governor’s workplace by the state GOP, neither Sanders nor some other Republican official used it for months on finish. And so issues stood for greater than six months, till legislators finally released the audit results to the public April 15.

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So how does one find yourself paying $19,000 for a lectern? The report includes a breakdown.

The lectern price $11,575, and a journey case was one other $2,200. Delivery and supply for each objects had been $1,225 and $975, respectively. Beckett and her enterprise companion, Hannah Salem Stone, reaped an unspecified $2,500 consulting price. (Stone is Sanders’ former Trump White Home co-worker, and her firm, Salem Methods, additionally labored on the governor’s marketing campaign and inauguration.) As a result of the acquisition was made with a state bank card, it included a $554 processing price.

ODIUM FROM THE PODIUM: Sanders, standing behind the borrowed lectern that may encourage her to buy her personal, used her inaugural handle to assault “indoctrination,” Washington, D.C., and different right-wing bogeymen.

Auditors stated the price and transport of the journey case “appeared affordable,” as did the lectern transport price. They had been unable to find out whether or not the price of the lectern itself or the consulting cost was affordable, nevertheless, as a result of Beckett, Stone and the New York-based firm that manufactured the lectern wouldn’t speak. Legislative audit workers “made repeated makes an attempt to acquire the particular customized specs of the rostrum from three distributors, and none responded,” the report says, including that comparable fashions “may be bought from on-line distributors beginning at roughly $7,000.”

Exorbitant pricing apart, the audit report paints an image of a governor’s workers that dragged their collective toes in the course of the investigation, failed to supply info requested by auditors and violated state transparency and buying legal guidelines. Sanders herself wouldn’t meet with auditors.

Auditors documented seven areas of potential noncompliance with state legislation. They embrace paying for the lectern earlier than it was delivered, failing to correctly report the acquisition, promoting state property with out going by means of the right channels, and modifying an bill months after it was obtained, which conflicts with a state legislation about tampering with a public record.

Auditors referred their findings to Pulaski County Prosecutor Will Jones and Lawyer Common Tim Griffin to find out whether or not any felony costs must be filed. Whereas it stays to be seen whether or not Jones will do something with the report, it’s possible Griffin won’t. The lawyer normal is a dependable supporter of Sanders’ authoritarian tendencies. Simply days earlier than the audit’s launch, Griffin’s office put out an opinion saying governors are exempt from nearly all state procurement and property disposal laws.

QUESTIONS AND EVASIONS: Sanders’ Deputy Chief of Workers Judd Deere (L) and Chief Authorized Counsel Cortney Kennedy testify earlier than state lawmakers on April 16.

Regardless of saying final fall that her workplace had adopted “standard operating procedure” for any state purchase when it purchased the lectern, Sanders latched onto Griffin’s argument. The governor’s workplace’s response to the audit declares that the workplace doesn’t have to comply with the accounting guidelines that apply to different state entities. It calls the audit a “waste of state time and sources” and the report “deeply flawed,” whereas additionally insisting it exonerates each the workplace and the governor. “No legal guidelines had been damaged. No fraud was dedicated,” the letter says, whereas repeatedly mendacity about what the report really comprises. 

The day after the report was launched, the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee met to review the findings. Sanders didn’t attend, as an alternative sending two senior staffers to reply legislators’ inquiries.

Lawmakers had been break up between those that appeared involved concerning the audit’s findings and people extra involved with offering cowl for the governor. Sen. Mark Johnson (R-Little Rock) apologized to Sanders and her workers and claimed she was “the sufferer of a weaponized political course of.”

However not each Republican was as desirous to make excuses for Sanders. Sen. John Payton (R-Wilburn) requested why the governor had not merely admitted that her staffers made a mistake when the difficulty was found and apologized to the general public. Deputy Chief of Workers Judd Deere wouldn’t hear of it.

“It was not a mistake,” Deere stated. Taking difficulty with Payton’s declare that the “commonplace lectern” was not definitely worth the price ticket, Deere countered, “it isn’t a regular lectern; it’s customized to a particular top.” 

That’s false: The lectern Sanders obtained was 44 inches tall, the identical as a regular Falcon-style mannequin. The audit report describes how the lectern was commissioned to be 39 inches tall — to finest accommodate Sanders whereas carrying 2-inch heels, in line with Sanders’ chief authorized counsel, Cortney Kennedy — however was not constructed to these specs, regardless of the $2,500 “consulting price” and inflated value.

WHAT DO WORDS EVEN MEAN? Regardless of repeatedly mendacity to legislators that the lectern was a “customized top,” the audit report made clear it was the identical top as a regular Falcon lectern.

Deere additionally struggled when Sen. Greg Leding (D-Fayetteville) requested him to clarify the contradiction between the audit report’s discovering that the lectern contained no digital elements and an announcement made by Sanders in October that the lectern’s price was due partly to particular audio options. 

Deere stated there was no discrepancy. The lectern features a studying gentle and holes by means of which sound gear wires could possibly be run sooner or later, he stated.

Rep. Tippi McCullough (D-Little Rock) requested whether or not the governor’s workplace had tried to assist auditors get in contact with Beckett or Stone, since workers had frequent communication with each ladies in the course of the ordering course of. Kennedy informed McCullough she had “despatched two emails,” one every to Beckett and Stone, on the auditors’ request. The governor’s workplace despatched one extra electronic mail to the distributors in January, in line with the audit report, however  “failed to connect” auditors’ questions.

Rep. Carol Dalby (R-Texarkana), an lawyer, requested Kennedy concerning the alteration of the Beckett bill to say “To be reimbursed” after Campbell requested the doc by means of the FOIA. Kennedy stated including such a be aware is a typical authorities observe used to maintain monitor of knowledge.

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The audit report doesn’t exonerate Sanders. But it surely’s on model for the governor to insist that it does. 

See if any of this sounds acquainted: A primary-time candidate spins identify recognition, grievance politics and Lee Greenwood lyrics right into a successful marketing campaign. The chief quickly fires or reassigns longtime workers and replaces them with loyal lackeys who haven’t any clue easy methods to run a authorities. It’s a bull-in-a-china-shop method to governing. That bull isn’t there to apologize! It’s there to trigger an enormous scene, break stuff after which depart. Among the many damaged issues is perhaps a legislation or two.

Investigations ensue. With signature slack-faced supply and muscle reminiscence for shameless deflection, the chief accuses the accusers of the true wrongdoing. What do investigators know? It’s all faux information! But it surely’s additionally smart to cowl one’s bases, so the chief dispatches the contradictory message that the outcomes of any investigation, be it by Robert Mueller or Arkansas auditors, are each a witch hunt and a complete exoneration. Repeat this line lengthy sufficient and loudly sufficient and it’d simply take. When all else fails, put out some cringey social media posts and faux none of it ever occurred. 

Following Donald Trump’s playbook makes good sense for a governor who staked her marketing campaign totally on her connection to Trump himself. And, truthfully … why not? Trump may be in authorized peril in a number of courts and jurisdictions, however he’s additionally the Republican alternative for president in 2024. To this point, felony indictments have solely supercharged his fundraising and ballot numbers. 

Whether or not we’ll finally see Sanders in a courtroom scorching seat like her previous boss stays to be seen. Native prosecutor Jones, who was elected in 2022, is comparatively unknown and could also be cautious of taking up the governor. 

There’s nonetheless the query of federal costs. Lawyer Tom Mars, who represents the previous state worker who blew the whistle final fall, has hinted on social media that one thing may be within the works. Requested lately whether or not federal legislation enforcement was trying into the matter, Mars responded, “I’m not attempting to be evasive, however I can’t reply that.” He famous {that a} grand jury subpoena explicitly warns towards disclosing even the receipt of such a subpoena.  

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