Posted on 02/25/2005 4:30:43 PM PST by Columbus Dawg
-- A federal grand jury subpoenaed payroll records, expense accounts and computer hard drives from the Ohio House of Representatives as part of a widening campaign-spending investigation of ex-House Speaker Larry Householder and his top political aides.
Dated Feb. 1, the subpoena requests only records involving Householder and former Chief of Staff Brett Buerck. Newly elected Speaker Jon Husted, a Dayton-area Republican, has urged House employees to cooperate with the probe.
"We fully complied with the request and turned over documents that same week," said Jack Christopher, legal counsel for the House Republican caucus.
The materials included paper records, a desktop computer assigned to Buerck, a laptop assigned to Householder and three compact discs, he said.
Two federal investigators also interviewed Dusten Kohlhorst, chief of information technology for the House, meeting with him for several hours earlier this month at a Wendy's restaurant in German Village, near downtown, Kohlhorst said Thursday.
Kohlhorst, 34, declined to discuss the questions he was asked by the agents from the FBI and IRS, saying, "They were pretty adamant that I don't comment about what the interview consisted of."
Asked whether any of Buerck's political material ended up on a state computer, Kohlhorst said, "I'm not going to talk about what was backed up or what wasn't backed up. There were questions along those lines that were asked of me, so I don't want to say anything more about that."
Kohlhorst, who has been the House's director of IT operations for the past 18 months, said the agents assured him that he had nothing to worry about.
"They told me when they first contacted me that I was not a target, that they were looking at me strictly as an information source. I am not a target in any way, shape or form.
"I have done nothing wrong. I have cooperated with everybody and I have nothing to hide."
FBI and IRS agents in Columbus began the investigation in March 2004 after receiving an anonymous memo that accused the Ohio House Republican Campaign Committee -- which Householder then super vised -- of overcharging some cam paign vendors and then hav ing those ven dors make se cret payments to Householder, Buerck and fund-raiser Kyle Sisk.
All parties have denied any wrongdoing.
Householder's attorney, Bill Wilkinson, said the former speaker has not been interviewed by any investigators and continues to maintain his innocence.
"He's always welcomed the investigation as the best way to clear his name," Wilkinson said.
Vendors mentioned in the anonymous memo were subpoenaed last year, along with Householder's personal banking records and documents from the campaign committee.
The latest subpoena is the first one sent to the House, and it prompted Husted to ask for and receive a state-appointed lawyer.
Attorney General Jim Petro appointed Columbus lawyer William Newcomb Jr. to provide "investigation assistance" to the House.
The subpoena requests "computers, hard drives, or other storage media such as CDs, floppy discs or DVDs" for computers assigned to Householder or Buerck, according to a copy that The Plain Dealer obtained through a public records request.
The investigation is being supervised by John Scott, a senior trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section in Washington, D.C. Scott signed the cover letter that accompanied the subpoena. He did not return a call seeking comment.
The request for computers and related materials comes after Buerck filed a police report on June 27, accusing an unidentified person of copying the hard drive of his laptop computer.
Although Buerck worked on at least one state computer, he kept his political work on a laptop purchased by the campaign committee, he said.
Buerck said Thursday he does not know why federal officials requested the computers or paper records, but said he never used state computers or other government property for political purposes.
"I'm very confident that during my service to the state, all rules and regulations were followed," he said.
Buerck continues to insist that information used in unflattering news stories could only have come from his personal laptop, and he said law enforcement authorities have done very little to discover who copied his hard drive.
"I think Paris Hilton is getting more attention for her Palm Pilot having been taken," he said.
After some of the information was published, Buerck and Sisk lost many of their high-paying clients, including the House Republican caucus.
Among the damaging information made public was a 109-page memo that laid out a plan to ruin the career of Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a fellow Republican and political rival.
It is also usually small dollar amounts. Still, it does look bad.
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