Stafford Email: Activities Done With “A Wink And A Nod By The Top”

Sen. Rand Paul & Doug Stafford

It’s the sort of admission almost never seen in writing.

A 2009 email sent by National Right to Work Committee Vice President Doug Stafford shows a clear intent to skirt the law by creating plausible deniability for NRTW President Mark Mix.

The illegal campaign activities of the National Right to Work Committee often filter through state groups. In Iowa, for example, whistleblower Dennis Fusaro ran MidAmerica Right To Work.

In 2009, Fusaro was concerned about questionable activities he was seeing and went over the head of Stafford to President Mark Mix. In an email rebuking Fusaro, Stafford admits to the deceptive purpose of the structure in writing:

Why did you believe you should give Mark knowledge of something of a nature we try to keep from his desk? (one of the reasons the groups are LEGALLY SEPARATE by the way). It’s not done to “cover” for anyone, or Travis, or whatever. It’s done to keep the legal head of one group from having involvement in the legal issues of another group.

Later in the short email, Stafford makes the shell game even more clear and says it’s done to benefit Mix.

Some of the things the state groups do are done with a wink and a nod by the top. You are compromising those things by approaching them the way you are/have. The reason I ask you to ask DNK or ME for something is so that I can decide what is not in MARK’s best interest to have to know or approve — or not. It’s not done for my benefit. It’s done for HIS benefit. He knows how much we spend in IA. He does not always know the exact expenditure. And there are reasons for that, and he knows that. But when you bring the specifics over my head to him, you blow the entire thing up.

DEVELOPING…