Posts by Karl Bremer

Last fall, Rep. Michele Bachmann’s campaign made a $9,200 charitable contribution to the faith-based drug treatment program Minnesota Teen Challenge in an effort to wash its hands of tainted contributions from Frank Vennes, Jr., a convicted money launderer and associate of alleged Ponzi scheme operator Tom Petters. But, the Minnesota Independent has recently learned, the donation was given back. Teen Challenge returned the check on Oct. 3, but Bachmann’s campaign waited nearly three months to disclose the fact to the Federal Elections Commission.

Less than two months after he was elected in 2002, Norm Coleman used the power of his yet-to-be-assumed U.S. Senate office to try to leverage a presidential pardon for convicted money launderer and Tom Petters associate Frank Vennes Jr. And two years after that, Coleman wrote yet another pardon plea on Vennes’ behalf.

The fallout from her Hardball appearance may have grabbed all the headlines, but that’s hardly the only crisis that Michele Bachmann has been dealing with this month. There is also the matter of her ties to Frank Vennes Jr., the ex-con and Bachmann campaign contributor on whose behalf she wrote a letter requesting a presidential pardon.

Bachmann later withdrew that request — and gave to charity some campaign funds she had received from Vennes. But as it turns out, it appears that Bachmann donated the money to Minnesota Teen Challenge, a faith-based evangelical recovery program on whose board of directors Vennes served as recently as February 2008.

The fallout from Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “anti-America” interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews last Friday has turned the 2008 6th District race on its head. But it also could poison the well for Bachmann’s future fundraising efforts should she win this time or run for another office in the future.

It’s been widely noted that Bachmann’s challenger, El Tinklenberg, has raised a reported $1.45 million in campaign donations since that interview.

How about Bachmann? She has taken in $29,900 in itemized (over $250) contributions since last Friday. And a spokesman for one of those contributors tells MnIndy his company might not do it again.

While Michele Bachmann has been calling on the media to investigate suspected “anti-American” members of Congress and who they associate with, she’s had little to say about her own personal and financial association with convicted felon, campaign contributor and Tom Petters associate Frank Vennes Jr.

Bachmann has refused repeated requests from Minnesota Independent for further clarification of her relationship with Vennes, which makes for a curious nexus of campaign financing, presidential pardons, evangelical ministries and multibillion-dollar Ponzi schemes.

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s latest campaign tv ad, “Bachmann: A Lobbyist’s Worst Nightmare”, depicts the Republican congresswoman as someone who can’t be bought by lobbyists.

But that hasn’t stopped the 6th District Republican from putting the “for sale” sign outside her office and raking in $843,079 from political action committees through Oct. 15 in this election cycle—at least $182,255 of which came from lobbyists, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Michele Bachmann’s chief of staff now has acknowledged that on the same day Bachmann withdrew a presidential pardon letter on behalf of Frank Vennes Jr., she donated at least one of Vennes’ multiple campaign contributions to charity. Neither the amount of the donation nor the name of the charity were revealed.

Vennes and his family are among Bachmann’s biggest individual campaign contributors. He and his wife, Kimberly, have donated $27,400 to Bachmann’s campaign funds since 2005–$9,200 this year alone. Vennes’ brother and his wife, Greg and Stephanie Vennes, have donated an additional $8,400 to Bachmann since 2005. And Vennes’ personal lawyer, C. Craig Howse, has donated another $5,000 to Bachmann’s campaign coffers since 2007.

It’s still not clear why Michele Bachmann used her congressional status to try to leverage a presidential pardon for someone who does not even live in her district. At this point, the only apparent connection between Frank Vennes Jr. and Bachmann as a congressperson is the $27,400 Vennes and his wife, Kimberly, have donated to Bachmann’s campaign funds since 2005, making the couple among Bachmann’s largest individual contributors. Vennes’ brother and his wife, Greg and Stephanie Vennes, have donated an additional $8,400 to Bachmann since 2005.

Read the letter, inside.

Frank Vennes Jr., a major financial contributor to Minnesota 6th District Congresswoman Michele Bachmann — as well as other Minnesota Republican candidates and causes — may be innocent until proven guilty, but Bachmann has already convicted him and thrown him under the campaign bus.

Barely a week after Vennes’ home was raided on Sept. 24 by federal agents in connection with the massive, billion-dollar fraud investigation of Tom Petters, the Stillwater Republican withdrew a letter of support for a Presidential pardon she had written for Vennes about a year ago.

While Michele Bachmann has been busy blaming poor people and minorities for the Wall Street meltdown and housing foreclosures, she’s also been busy dealing with her own housing crisis: how to sell her toney Stillwater home and move into her new $1.27 million manor overlooking the 18th hole of Stoneridge Golf Course in West Lakeland Township.