Campaign Whistleblower Chambers Files First Request for Blystone’s Documents, Financial Records

 

The attorney for Sarah Chambers, the former co-campaign manager for Joseph K. Blystone’s gubernatorial campaign, filed her first request for records in support of her campaign finance complaint against her former campaign under consideration by the Ohio Elections Commission.

Scott A. Pullins, the Mount Vernon lawyer representing Chambers, named Blystone, his wife and treasurer M. Jane Blystone, and Friends of Joe Blystone, the campaign committee as respondents.

Chambers filed her 51-page complaint in October, and in it, she detailed how the Blystone campaign mishandled cash contributions and misreported other contributions, including her own donation from the campaign – taken from her daughter’s college fund.

At the December meeting of the Ohio Elections Commission held a preliminary hearing, the members voted 7-0 to have a full hearing of Chambers’ complaints.

The discovery request was comprehensive:

Respondents, regardless of the origin or location, whether an original, identical, copy, draft, or non-identical copy, whether an official or unofficial document, including, but not limited to: minutes, notes, comments, worksheets, summaries, records or other reports concerning meetings, conferences, visits, surveys, inspections, statements, interviews or telephone conversations; inter­office and intra-office memoranda; books, manuals, pamphlets, bulletins, circulars, instructions, work papers, transcripts, reports, memoranda, summaries, studies, analyses, evaluations, worksheets, invoices, contracts, journals, logs, files; statistical records, diaries, calendars, travel and telephone logs, and appointment books; correspondence and telegrams, envelopes and other wrappers and packaging; graphs, charts and maps; transcripts of verbal testimony or statements; checks, check stubs and money orders, travel vouchers, receipts, returns; reports of experts; affidavits; balance sheets, profit and loss statements, books of account, statements of account, and other financial data; financial data, analyses, statistical and other forecasts, projections or budgets; teletypes, telefax; printouts or other stored information from computers or other information retrieval systems; photographic matter or sound reproduction, however produced or reproduced, including, but not limited to, photographs, microfiche, microfilm, videotapes, recordings, motion pictures, tapes, cassettes, and discs; and any other written, printed, recorded or graphic matter.

Pullins gave the respondents until 4 p.m. February 3 to deliver the request.

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Neil W. McCabe is the national political editor of The Star News Network. Send him news tips at: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @neilwmccabe2.
Photo “Joe Blystone” by Joe Blystone.