Collamore Claims Democrat Official Pushed Him to Stay Silent About Fraud Until After Election

Former Democratic Rep. Clinton Collamore said Thursday that “someone in the Democratic Party“ urged him to remain silent on his election fraud charges until after the Nov. 8, 2022 elections.

The allegation, if true, suggests that the timing of the announcement that Collamore had been indicted involved, at some level, a political calculation to help the Maine Democratic Party hold power in Augusta.

The Lincoln County News broke the story:

[Collamore] said he wanted to hold a press conference prior to the November election but was told not to by members of his party because it might affect election outcomes.

“It was someone in the Democratic Party” who advised him not to come forward publicly, Collamore said, declining to name the individual or position in the party.

“Today, I wish I’d done it anyway,” he said.

Collamore refused to identify which Democratic Party official pressured him to remain silent until after the election, abruptly hanging up the phone when contacted for this story.

He told LCN he would be unenrolling from the Democratic Party because of the controversy.

The Maine Commission on Ethics and Election Practices disclosed to the public on Jan. 23 that the commission first suspected irregularities with Collamore’s campaign finance filings “during the summer of 2022.”

Collamore had applied for and received $14,274 in taxpayer funding to run for office. Under the terms of the program that uses taxpayer money to bankroll political campaigns, Collamore was required to collect small contributions and signatures to demonstrate community support for his bid.

At some point “during the summer of 2022,” the commission discovered irregularities with Collamore’s petition signatures, interviewed four witnesses who confirmed the commission’s suspicions, and then handed their findings off to the Office of the Attorney General (OAG).

Jonathan Wayne, longtime Maine ethics head, refused to say when his office informed the OAG about the findings of their investigation into Collamore, describing his team’s investigation as preliminary.

Wayne said a comment from Collamore and a comment from his attorney that were conveyed in the Lincoln County News story were incorrect.

Wayne said it was not the case, as Collamore said in the story, that the ethics commission advised Collamore that it would not take action until after the election.

Wayne also said that it was not the case, as Collamore’s attorney implied in the story, that the commission has a policy of avoiding activities that might influence the outcome of an election.

“The Ethics Commission did not tell Mr. Collamore that we would not take action until after the election,” Wayne said in a statement to the Maine Wire.

“We do not have a policy of waiting on enforcement matters until after the election,” he said, adding that he missed the deadline to clarify these items with the LCN reporter by a few hours.

Wayne said once the commission turned the investigation over to the OAG, enforcement decisions or decisions about when to announce an indictment became the domain of Attorney General Aaron Frey.

“The timing of the investigation and prosecution was in the hands of the OAG, not the Ethics Commission,” Wayne said.

Precisely when the commission disclosed their suspicions to the OAG’s office will be of paramount importance to determining whether the OAG delayed what appears on the surface to be an open-and-shut indictment until after the election.

According to the January release from Wayne, the commission’s investigation had already interviewed four people who confirmed that the signature’s Collamore submitted were not valid. And Collamore’s apparent desire to hold a press conference prior to the election confirms that he was already admitting to the violations.

Based on publicly available information from the commission, the OAG could have had control of the investigation as early as late June or early July – more than three months before Election Day, and more than seven months before the public was made aware.

Wayne said the commission would not be investigating Collamore’s allegations that he was pressured for political reasons to remain quiet about the investigation by a Democratic Party official.

“Mr. Collamore has been sentenced and has returned the Maine Clean Election Act funds,” he said. “From our point of view, the matter is closed, and the Ethics Commission is not going to be investigating any campaign advice Mr. Collamore may have received from others.”

At the time the commission was investigating Collamore, candidates for office across the state were battling it out in what many believed would be very tight elections, including for the majority in the House of Representatives. At the time, it was conceivable that one or two seats could have determined which party won a majority in the House of Representatives.

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If AG Frey delayed, for political reasons, the indictment of a Democratic candidate, that would raise serious questions about the fair and non-partisan application of the laws in Maine, especially around elections.

Both the commission and the OAG are refusing to say when the Attorney General took control of the investigation.

Frey’s office did not respond to inquiries asking when it first learned what the commission had discovered and resolved to indictment Collamore.

Wayne declined to say when his team communicated with the OAG.

“The only comment I would make is that thorough investigations take time,” he said.

The Maine Wire is exploring whether a Freedom of Access Act request would shed light on when the OAG first learned of Collamore’s fraud, how long it took them to make an indictment, and with whom this information was shared.

However, Wayne has indicated that he will invoke 21-A M.R.S. § 1003(3-A)(D) to prevent the press and the public from obtaining public records that would shed light on whether government officials delayed an indictment or an announcement in order to help Democratic candidates win elections.