Charges: Beck supplied $$ for contribution Heileson claimed as his own
Here’s what the charging documents in the “Integrity in Government” PAC case show: M.C. “Chick” Heileson is charged with a misdemeanor for contributing $12,000 to the PAC, which backed tea party challengers to Gov. Butch Otter and Attorney General Lawrence Wasden in the 2014 GOP primary, and claiming it was his own money. Doyle Beck is charged with a misdemeanor for providing the money, while pretending it came from Heileson.
Heileson had reported to the Idaho Secretary of State’s office that he and his wife, Gloria, made the $12,000 contribution to the PAC on May 7, 2014. But questions were raised about that, because when Heileson ran for Congress two years before, he filed official financial disclosure forms stating that he and his wife earned less than $30,000 in 2011, with nearly half of that coming from Social Security, and that he had no personal assets and a home equity loan of between $15,000 and $50,000.
Idaho Falls attorney Steve Taggart raised questions about that and other suspicious donations to the PAC in a Dec. 27, 2015 column for Idaho Politics Weekly; subsequently, the Idaho Attorney General’s office received a complaint and launched an investigation.
In May of 2014, the then-new PAC, chaired by Idaho GOP executive committee member Lee Ann Callear of Ahsahka, had raised just under $20,000 since it formed that March, mostly from out-of-state individuals and couples, but also including $2,000 from the Idaho County Republican Central Committee and $1,700 from the Clearwater County Republican Central Committee. Then, in a single week shortly before the primary election, the Integrity in Government PAC suddenly raised $107,000 in nine big donations, six of those from residents of the Idaho Falls area, including two-time GOP congressional candidate and longtime John Birch Society organizer Chick Heileson, and the other three from Utah and Wyoming.
The money funded campaign attacks on Otter and Wasden; Callear said she formed the PAC with Beck, the Bonneville County GOP chairman, and three other north-central Idaho residents.
According to a probable cause affidavit filed with the 7th District Court in Bonneville County, an investigator for the Idaho Attorney General’s office interviewed Heileson on March 1. Heileson said he’d made the $12,000 contribution, but didn’t have enough money, so he borrowed $6,000 of it from Beck. Heileson told investigators that he’d repaid the loan from Beck by working it off in trade, but refused to provide any documentation of that, according to the court document.
Taggart’s column also raised questions about several of the other big, sudden contributions to the PAC, including one for $12,000 from a Utah bankruptcy attorney who had been in practice just three years; another for $10,000 from a Orem, Utah limited liability company whose principal was in his 20s; and another $10,000 from a Jackson Hole, Wyo. LLC “that seems to have no actual, active business activity.” Taggart noted then that neither firm had made any other campaign contributions.
“While suspicious, it is possible that there was a reasonable explanation for these contributions,” Taggart wrote. “But, none was ever provided in the 2014 primary. That was a real disservice to Idaho voters.”
