A U.S. attorney overseeing a federal probe into the commonwealth of Kentucky has made thousands of dollars in political contributions to two Republican candidates who, if elected, would be directly involved with that investigation—the GOP nominee for attorney general, and sitting AG and gubernatorial candidate Daniel Cameron.
The donations raise questions of potential impropriety, government ethics experts said, because they lend the appearance of a senior Justice Department official attempting to exert political influence over his district.
Cameron, as current attorney general, has already had contact with the DOJ about the probe, which is being run out of the Western District of Kentucky and concerns state-run mental health systems. A DOJ spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Beast that the investigation is ongoing.
The donor—Michael Bennett, acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Kentucky—contributed $1,000 to Cameron on May 7, nine days ahead of the primary election, according to Kentucky campaign finance records. That same day, Bennett gave $500 to the Republican running to fill Cameron’s slot, Russell Coleman, on top of a previous $1,000 donation in September.
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Coleman was Bennett’s predecessor and former boss at the top of the Western District, where he was appointed by former President Donald Trump.
Both of Bennett’s contributions went to support Republicans who, if elected, would be directly responsive to the probe. Legal experts told The Daily Beast that the donations lend the appearance of “political interference” and “publicly picking sides.” (This month, Cameron joined Trump allies across the country when he attacked the political “weaponization” of the DOJ after the former president’s federal indictment in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.)
Delaney Marsco, senior legal counsel for ethics at nonpartisan watchdog Campaign Legal Center, told The Daily Beast that voters have a right to know that Bennett is appearing to demonstrate “political interference” or “favoritism” in connection to his official duties.
“The public absolutely has a right to know that DOJ employees are not avoiding even the appearance of political interference or favoritism in department activities. In this case, it certainly could raise questions about whether the donating individual is attempting to influence an investigation that would impact their office,” Marsco said.
She added that this kind of transparency is critical when it comes to political donations, noting that absent those disclosure rules, “we would never even be able to pose the question.”
Jordan Libowitz, communications director at watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, agreed with Marsco’s analysis, telling The Daily Beast that Bennett appears to be “publicly picking sides” in who will run the state he’s investigating.
“At the very least, there’s an optics issue, since the current governor is running for re-election and the U.S. Attorney tasked with investigating the state is publicly picking sides in who will run it,” Libowitz said.
Kentucky finance records show that Cameron’s rival, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, received $250 in April from Assistant U.S. Attorney Tiffany Fleming, head of the civil division in the Eastern District of Kentucky. Fleming’s contribution came through a fundraising event, according to campaign finance records, but AUSA-level prosecutors aren’t subject to strict limitations on political activity. The Daily Beast could not find public reports that would suggest a conflict of interest between Fleming’s office and the governor.
But Libowitz pointed back to the probe, saying that even if Bennett was legally free to make the donation, “it was a very poor choice and certainly will raise questions about his investigation.”
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The Western District’s investigation—a civil rights inquiry into Kentucky’s mental health systems—was announced in May 2022, but the DOJ has not released findings and the University of Michigan School of Law’s Civil Rights Clearinghouse database shows only that the case is ongoing.
A Western District representative would not comment on the investigation, citing internal policy. A spokesperson from the DOJ’s D.C. office confirmed that the probe is ongoing, but declined to comment on the donations. Spokespeople for the Cameron and Coleman campaigns did not reply to The Daily Beast’s questions, and neither did the offices of the Kentucky attorney general or governor.
A DOJ press release from the time explained that the probe—a joint effort between the civil rights divisions in the Western District of Kentucky and main justice in D.C.—centers on whether the commonwealth “subjects adults with serious mental illness” in the Louisville area to “unnecessary institutionalization” and “unnecessarily segregates people with serious mental illness in psychiatric hospitals,” in violation of provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Such policies—as opposed to embracing community-based services—may increase the risk of confrontations with law enforcement, the statement said.
The press release included a statement from Bennett, who said his office would “vigorously enforce the ADA,” adding that “our fellow citizens with mental health disabilities deserve nothing less.”
The statement noted that the DOJ had notified both Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and attorney general Cameron ahead of the announcement.
But Beshear—who preceded Cameron as AG—criticized that announcement during a press conference the next week. He claimed that investigators hadn’t contacted his office until “roughly an hour” before publishing what he characterized as an “aggressive” press release that didn’t match the tenor of their prior discussion. The one-term Democrat, who is seeking re-election against Cameron this year, added that he was “surprised” that the feds hadn’t reached out to any state officials or requested documentation before publicizing the investigation.
Beshear then praised the integrity of Kentucky’s mental health officials and pledged that his office would cooperate with the probe. But he added that, from his perspective as a former state AG, he would have “never” launched an investigation with a press release without providing “some underlying documentation and discussions first.”
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“We are going to cooperate, but if they want cooperation, we need to understand how they got to where they are and where they think they’re going,” Beshear said.
DOJ guidance says that U.S. Attorneys, who are typically political appointees, qualify as “further restricted” employees whose political activity is limited under the law. While those employees may make campaign contributions, a review of campaign finance data shows that sitting U.S. Attorneys rarely do so.
A search of Kentucky filings by employer and occupation returned a total of two such donors: Bennett, and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maine, Halsey Frank, who gave a total $350 last year—also to Coleman. On the federal level, records searches for donations by employer and occupation returned a total of 16 hits over the last decade.
In 2016, the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General found that U.S. Attorney James L. Santelle violated department and federal standards after participating in campaign and fundraising events. The report prompted Santelle’s resignation.
Bennett, however, is not a confirmed political appointee. He has served as acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District since January 2021, when his Trump-appointed predecessor stepped aside at the end of the previous administration. That predecessor, of course, was Russell Coleman—the current Kentucky AG candidate who now enjoys Bennett’s financial support.
While it’s typical for DOJ political appointees to cycle out when the White House changes hands, what’s not so typical about Bennett’s position is that President Joe Biden still hasn’t been able to advance a nominee to fill Coleman’s old slot—a congressional roadblock that bears the fingerprints of the Senate’s master obstructor, Minority Leader and fellow Kentuckian Mitch McConnell.
Last year, Coleman defended his successor in a Louisville Courier-Journal article examining the Biden-McConnell impasse, saying that “Acting U.S. attorneys like career DOJ prosecutor Mike Bennett serve ably and honorably.” Four months later, Bennett gave Coleman $1,000.
The Courier-Journal article was published the day after Bennett announced the mental health investigation.
While that report doesn’t reference the probe, it notes that DOJ nominees are typically recommended to the sitting president by the senior senator of the president’s party. In Kentucky’s case, however, both senators are Republicans, so the responsibility defaulted to the state’s single Democratic House member—Rep. John Yarmuth—who expressed frustration about an inability to work with the man who affectionately self-identifies as the “grim reaper” of congressional obstructionism.
“Mitch has never discussed a single appointment of any position in my 15+ years here,” Yarmuth told the Courier-Journal.
It also turns out that the same person chiefly responsible for Bennett’s enduring post in the Western District is also a close ally of Daniel Cameron—an association that dogged the rising GOP star in the hostile primary. A former “McConnell Scholar” at the University of Louisville, Cameron later served as McConnell’s legal counsel and is widely seen as a potential heir when the octogenarian retires.
McConnell, however, publicly kept his distance from Cameron during the primary, remaining neutral despite Trump’s endorsement of his longtime protege—or perhaps because of it.
McConnell doesn’t appear on Coleman’s list of endorsements, which features a slate of prominent Republicans, including former Attorney General Bill Barr, Coleman’s former boss at DOJ.
Coleman often cites his federal experience to support his campaign claim that he would be “the most qualified Attorney General in Kentucky history.” In a political moment where DOJ is synonymous with an anti-Republican “deep state,” Coleman’s campaign site boasts endorsements from several former prosecutors, who, in addition to Barr, include two former USA’s along with former Trump acting attorney general and “masculine toilet” salesman Matt Whitaker.
Bennett, whose $1,000 contribution to Coleman came two months before Coleman officially filed his candidacy with the state, does not appear among the endorsements.
The news of Bennett’s donations comes amid a bitter campaign roiling with accusations of financial impropriety.
Both parties referred the opposing gubernatorial candidate to the FBI for campaign finance allegations this month. For his part, Cameron cited a Kentucky Republican mayor’s bungled $200,000 bundling operation in support of Beshear. The next day, the Kentucky Democratic Party told the feds that Cameron may have violated ethics laws in connection with donations from a company his office was investigating—donations that Cameron had personally solicited, The Daily Beast reported.
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That company, Edgewater Recovery Centers, falls under jurisdiction for the Eastern District of Kentucky. But another major Cameron backer, national conglomerate BrightSpring Health, is headquartered in Louisville—in the Western District.
BrightSpring has been the subject of numerous complaints, including a BuzzFeed News expose reporting abusive and neglectful treatment of patients with disabilities. That report came out exactly one month before the Western District announced its investigation.
So far, at least 22 employees of BrightSpring, along with subsidiaries Pharmerica and ResCare, have contributed a total $15,460 to Cameron’s campaign, Kentucky filings show. Almost all the donations came from a February campaign fundraising event that pulled contributions from company officials in nine states.
Cameron’s office is currently suing KKR, BrightSpring’s parent company; Franklin County court records show the commonwealth has two active lawsuits against the company.
The Cameron and Beshear campaigns have so far reported receiving nearly $300,000 combined from the health industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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