Will Victor Marx face criminal accountability?
Last week Victor Marx and his gubernatorial campaign argued a hearing officer should reduce their potential fines for campaign finance violations. At the same time, 9News released a recording of Marx admitting his name appeared on a contribution to get money into the campaign.
At this point, the question is not whether Marx will be assessed unprecedented fines. He will. But should he face criminal charges as well? Probably.
Marx may have committed fraud against Coloradans that needs to be investigated. If that investigation turns up enough evidence — and the evidence already in the public domain is pretty damning — he should be charged and tried. Coloradans should expect no less from its elected prosecutors.
I understand Marx will scream about politically motivated prosecution. But the fear he will do so should not inoculate him from being held to account. Accommodating him would be politically motivated itself, but with the added consequence of chipping away at the rule of law and democratic principles.
I am not a practicing criminal attorney. I have tried exactly one criminal case in my career (and won!), but it does not take a seasoned member of law enforcement to be leary of the many things Marx and his team have said and done over the course of this campaign. Furthermore, it seems that multiple offices should be looking into both.
For example, under Colorado criminal statutes, it is a crime if a person knowingly “makes a false or misleading statement in any advertisement addressed to the public or to a substantial segment thereof for the purpose of promoting the purchase or sale of property or services” (C.R.S. § 18-5-301(1)(e)). That sounds an awful lot like what is happening with the Victor Marx merchandise store.
When the story first broke, I suggested as much in a column and in an interview with Kyle Clark and 9News. On camera Marx told people “another way people can support us” was to visit a separate merch store, selling identical merchandise his campaign offered, and buy unlimited amounts of merch.
Off the bat, he clearly misstated campaign finance law; merchandise sales are necessarily subject to campaign finance restrictions or it would be a loophole that would destroy the entire regulatory regime.
But Marx also made a direct statement to the public that those sales would benefit his campaign. He told people that their purchases would help him to win the gubernatorial race for Republicans.
Yet no corresponding entries have been made on TRACER. The campaign has never reported any inflow of funds from those sales. And we know there were sales — several news organizations and individuals bought cheap merchandise during their own investigations.
Revelations in the interim make it seem more than less likely Marx committed criminal fraud. For example, in a subsequent report 9News uncovered that the company running the merch store, Not Shook, LLC, is owned by Marx. At least that is what the Marx campaign listed on its TRACER report.
If true, it means Marx pocketed any money people spent expecting to help his campaign. He enriched himself based on their desire to help win the governor’s office. Because he has not contributed that money into the campaign — which, itself would be another campaign finance violation by acting as a conduit for contributions by others — it means it just went into his bank account.
That is the type of scheme that led his primary opponents to call him a “con man,” “corrupt” and “unfit” for office. It is the type of scam that prosecutors love to bring to trial.
Maybe sensing the danger, Marx made the statement about his campaign treasurer just putting his name on the entry to get the money into the campaign. Of course, that makes both the campaign finance violations willful and suggests fraudulent filings.
You would think a man who claims to perform exorcisms would be familiar with the phrase “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
Last week’s hearing only addressed the first few campaign finance allegations against Marx. Specifically, the claims centered around excess contributions the campaign failed to refund. It did not address anything related to the merchandise store. Those will come later.
But when the state examined Marx’s treasurer, they pointedly reminded him at least twice that he was under oath. That suggests they have information that his testimony was less than completely honest.
It could also be a way to put pressure on the treasurer to flip on Marx.
Hopefully a few prosecutors or investigators were tuned into the proceedings. The two most likely to oversee such an investigation would be either the 4th Judicial District Attorney (covering El Paso County, where Marx lives) or the Colorado Attorney General. Obviously both have individual complications in such a case: the former, Michael Allen, stumps with Marx around the state as the Republicans nominee for AG; the latter, Phil Weiser, is Marx’s opponent in the gubernatorial race.
But complexity should not excuse illegality. Either could recuse and firewall themselves from an investigation. Both have professional, career staff capable of doing the work without crossing ethical lines.
Colorado deserves to know if one of the leading gubernatorial candidates has committed crimes. The only way we will be sure is if a full, fair investigation is initiated, any proper charges are filed and a trial convened.
Any failure to follow such a process would be a disservice to our state’s citizens and an invitation for future candidates to ignore our laws.
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