Bachmann Scandal

FBI Searches Bachmann Aide House

The Iowa home of Kent Sorensen, a former Iowa state senator who allegedly received illegal payments from Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign was searched by the FBI last month.

Last month, the FBI spent hours searching through the home of Kent Sorensen, a former Iowa State Senator and top aide to Michele Bachmann's 2012 presidential campaign and confisicated a variety of material, including computers.

According to the Des Moines Register, the federal law enforcement agency executed a search warrant at Sorensen's house on November 20 in connection to an ongoing investigation of "presidential campaign politics." In particular, accusations that Bachmann was illegally paying Sorensen for his endorsement and that the then-Iowa state senator stole an email list of conservative parents who home school their children for the Bachmann campaign.

None of this would have likely come to light, save for the fact that three days before the 2012 Iowa Caucuses Sorensen dramatically defected to the Ron Paul campaign. Bachmann claimed that Paul had paid off Sorensen to leave her campaign and endorse him, something investigators have subsquently found evidence of. This, combined with a complaint about Sorensen's conduct while on the Bachmann campaign, sparked an ongoing investigation by the House Ethics Committee into Bachmann as well as an inquiry by the Federal Election Commission in addition to the FBI's investigation.

An attorney for Sorensen, who resigned from the Iowa State Senate because of the scandal in October, insisted to the Des Moines Register Wednesday morning “We were not notified that he was the target of any investigation. They took computers and things that would be used to verify or validate communications with presidential entities.”

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Ben Jacobs

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