Judge determines Tim Eyman broke campaign finance rules

A Thurston County Superior Court judge has ruled that gubernatorial candidate Tim Eyman broke campaign finance rules and concealed hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions.

According to the ruling made by Judge James Dixon, Eyman failed to register as a political committee, failed to report $766,447 in contributions he received for ballot propositions, and failed to file a C-3 report and a C-4 report for each month between September 2012 through July 2018.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson Tweeted that the ruling partially resolves his case against Eyman. Ferguson is suing Eyman for $2.1 million, in addition to hundreds of thousands of dollars in court contempt fees.

The penalty will be decided on July 13.

Eyman, who recently declared as a Republican in the gubernatorial race, filed for bankruptcy in late November 2018.

The contempt finding stems from Eyman’s “refusal to disclose complete information related to hundreds of thousands of dollars of payments he solicited from individual donors.” He was initially ordered to provide those documents in late January 2019 and then again by May 31.

For a previous contempt ruling, the court ordered that Eyman be fined $250 per day beginning in February 2018 until he produced requested discovery documents. That was doubled to $500 in September. Ferguson’s office estimates Eyman has been sanctioned over $211,000 across 525 days in contempt.

A Thurston County judge ruled in April that Eyman could face a lifetime ban from handling finances for political committees as a possible punishment in this case.

Eyman was fined $50,000 for improper use of campaign funds in 2002. In that ruling, Eyman agreed to a ban that barred him from acting as “signer on any financial accounts” for political committees.

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