Tim Eyman ordered by judge to pay another $2.9 million in fines to state
Apr 16, 2021, 3:04 PM | Updated: 3:16 pm
Anti-tax activist Tim Eyman. (Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)
(Photo by Karen Ducey/Getty Images)
Legal troubles for Tim Eyman continued Friday, after a Thurston County judge ordered him to pay nearly $2.9 million in court fees related to a recently-resolved lawsuit brought by state Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
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Ferguson’s years-long lawsuit wrapped up in February, culminating in Eyman being fined over $2.6 million for “numerous and egregious” violations of campaign finance laws, and having him barred from managing any and all finances for political committees.
These latest fines are in addition to that initial February ruling, running the tab up to almost $5.5 million for the anti-tax activist.
“Tim Eyman broke the law — repeatedly — and in order to delay his day of reckoning, he willfully dragged out this case with frivolous and cost-inflating litigation tactics,” Ferguson said in a written release following the announcement of this latest fine. “This decision ensures that Tim Eyman bears the cost of his years-long obstruction of our case — not the taxpayers.”
In 2019, that same Thurston County judge found Eyman in contempt stemming from a “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 in May of that same year.
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The court had also ordered that Eyman be fined $250 per day for a different contempt ruling beginning in February 2018 until he produced requested discovery documents. That was doubled to $500 in September of 2018. At the time, Ferguson’s office estimated Eyman has been sanctioned over $211,000 across 525 days in contempt.
Eyman responded to the latest $2.9 million fine on Friday, telling KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show that requests for Ferguson over the course of the lawsuit amounted to “a siege.”
“We were getting hit with so many motions, so many requests for information,” he said. “No matter how much we gave him, it was never enough.”
According to Ferguson’s office, Eyman is paying his court-ordered fines in $10,000 installments “every month on or before the fifth day of the month,” and so far, has been “consistently” making those payments.
Due to Friday’s additional fine, he will have to begin paying the state $13,500 every month starting in January 2022.
