It would not surprise me in the least. I believe both Bauer and McGuinness worked for Benson on her campaign.
I know that one of these guys was dismissed from a campaign a few years ago over falsifying a sob story about a woman with a sick child in an attempt to push Obamacare.
Looking at some older stories and it looks like they’ve been trying all kinds of stunts to get out of this. In this story from April they attempted to get a judge to recuse himself because he’s a republican.
http://www.theoaklandpress.com/articles/2011/04/13/news/doc4da5badf5f006111554013.txt