All registered voters have received the glossy brochures filled with fabrications, misleading statements, fairy tales and outright lies.
All registered voters have received the push polling calls that misrepresent facts.
Kudos to Rep. Brian Mannal for challenging this Wack-A-Ding group - Jobs First Independent Expenditure PAC!
What is more disturbing is the willingness of uninformed voters to endorse the .....
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Tea Baggers fight for RIGHT TO LIE!
Mannal wins request for complaint against PAC
By C. Ryan Barber
rbarber@capecodonline.com Posted Jan. 6, 2015 @ 7:35 pm
FALMOUTH — An assistant clerk magistrate has granted state Rep. Brian Mannal’s request for a criminal complaint against Jobs First Independent Expenditure PAC, setting the stage for a court case against the conservative group accused of breaking state law with negative campaign mailers.
Mannal, D-Centerville, said Jobs First attorney Peter Horstmann told him Tuesday that Assistant Clerk Magistrate Norman Butler had signed off on the criminal complaint and that Melissa Lucas, the group’s chairwoman and treasurer, has been summonsed to appear in Falmouth District Court for a Jan. 27 arraignment on the misdemeanor charge of making a false statement about a political candidate.
Butler issued the criminal complaint on Dec. 24, six days after Mannal, Horstmann and Lucas appeared before him in a closed-door hearing, the Falmouth District Court clerk’s office confirmed Tuesday.
“I do feel vindicated to some extent,” Mannal said.
“There’s never been any doubt in my mind that there’s merit in my complaint,” he added. “I didn’t do this for political purposes. I did this because I was wronged, criminally wronged.”
On Tuesday, Butler declined to discuss the reasoning behind his decision to issue the complaint. Horstmann and Jobs First officials did not return requests for comment.
In the application, filed a week before he narrowly won reelection to a second term, Mannal argued that Jobs First violated a nearly 70-year-old state law, prohibiting “any false statement” meant to defeat a candidate, with campaign mailers claiming that he filed sex offender legislation in hopes of representing more indigent clients. Mannal said he has never handled a sex offender case and lacks certification to do so, making him unable to financially benefit from his bill, which called for notifying sex offenders of their rights to a hearing and court-appointed attorney when applying for reclassification or early termination of sex offender status.
With the mailer’s claim that he filed the bill in hopes of “helping himself,” Mannal said Jobs First crossed a “fairly bright line, in my opinion, between acceptable and permissible speech and libel.”
A day before the clerk magistrate’s hearing in Falmouth, Horstmann sought an injunction in federal court, but Judge Nathaniel Gorton denied his “emergency motion” on the grounds that it was too late to intervene in a state court matter. In the federal court filings, Horstmann argued that Jobs First’s mailers simply asked 2nd Barnstable District voters to “connect the dots” between the sex offender bill and Mannal’s work as a defense attorney who occasionally represents court-appointed clients.
Noting that the state law in question dates back to 1946, Horstmann has criticized it as antiquated and has repeatedly argued that it violates the First Amendment.
With the criminal complaint issued, the prosecution of Lucas falls to the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s Office.
Mannal publicly supported Cotuit defense attorney Richard Barry’s bid to unseat Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe, a Republican, in the recent election cycle. But in an interview Tuesday, Mannal said he sees no need for O’Keefe to recuse his office from the case.
“I very much trust his decisions when it comes to the courtroom,” Mannal said. “I don’t believe he will be swayed by politics. Quite frankly, I don’t think that will even come into play.”
O’Keefe, who won reelection to a fourth four-year term with 56 percent of the vote, did not return a request for comment.
http://www.capecodtimes.com/article/20150106/NEWS/150109620/101015/NEWSLETTER100
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