Rep. Jennie Armstrong asks for help retiring her legal bills, but is it legal?

37
2331

Rep. Jennie Armstrong, whose candidacy was once legal challenged because she had barely arrived in the state from Louisiana before filing as a candidate for office, now wants donors to help her retire her legal bills for the escapade.

She says she still owes her lawyer Scott Kendall $45,000 and wants Alaskans to help her retire the debt by its due date, which is Aug. 31.

Armstrong, however, mentioned no such debt on her Public Official Financial Disclosure, which she filed in March. The POFD is something all public officials must complete so the public understands their conflicts of interest.

She also did not disclose this major debt in her campaign Alaska Public Offices Commission reports.

And so the debt to Kendall has not been disclosed personally or by her campaign.

What makes it even more interesting is that Kendall, who defended Armstrong successfully in court so that she could proceed as a legislative candidate, is not only the architect of Ballot Measure 2 (open primaries and ranked-choice general elections), but he is an aggressive political operative who gets involved in many election controversies. He has two current complaints filed against conservative groups — Preserve Democracy and Alaskans for Honest Elections.

The argument could be made that such a large debt to a political operative is something that should have been disclosed to the public by Armstrong.

But it wasn’t disclosed. Kendall has for the past year, since helping Armstrong win her case, more or less owned Armstrong with a five-figure debt that she is only now revealing.

It’s no small fact that Armstrong earned up to $200,000 as a consultant with Outside clients in 2022, for groups with names such as Equitable Evaluation Initiative and the Kera Collective.

Armstrong has also already transferred over $10,000 into a future campaign account and $9,000 of campaign money into her legal defense fund.

Thus, it’s apparent she incurred at up to an $80,000 debt to Kendall to defend her right to be a candidate last year, against all odds, since she had scant evidence that she had lived in the state long enough.

Jay McDonald, a citizen activist, has filed a complaint with the Alaska Public Offices Commission about the apparent problem that Armstrong has created for herself.

Armstrong, using her campaign to pay off a non-campaign debt, may also have a problem with the Legislative Ethics Committee. That is a closed process inside the Legislature.

The nondisclosure appears to be on several levels, and the fine could be as much as $500 a day, which could amount to well over $150,000.

Here’s the complaint filed with APOC:

37 COMMENTS

  1. If it was against an ideological/political opponent, Scott Kendall would do everything within reason, and most likely a few things that stretch it to the edge of perversion, to chase down any attorney that knowingly accepted inappropriately obtained funds.

  2. What a freakin s**tshow. Is that Chris Constant in drag? What the H**l happened to the city I moved to in the seventies?
    Y2K definitely took its toll on Anchorage.
    Absolutely unbelievable. Who the h**l supports these circus clowns?
    Not proud to be Alaskan anymore. The swamp smell is overwhelming in the “Bowl”… Time to search for higher ground.

  3. A nuisance lawsuit, with outsized attorney fees. Very common to separate political campaign financing from personal financing. Unlike Governor Dunleavy, Rep. Armstrong does not have a rich brother who made a fortune bilking PG&E customers.

    • Do you know that for a fact, Frank, or are you just making sh*t up again? And she should not have disclosed it, you are arguing? Frankly, you have gone off the deep end.

      Now explain to us why Jennie Armstrong was so passionate in arguing in favor of ranked choice voting during committee meetings this year. I’ll wait…

  4. Hey, friends, I’m a little low on change after paying my huge property tax bill and not able to count on my PFD to offset this expense. It would mean the world to me if you could help me out.

    • No matter how much one may despise the Democratic Party in general, this is not cause for celebration.

      A system that permits you to personally sue someone for simply filing for office (forcing the candidate and their family to be on the hook for potentially hundreds of thousand of dollars in attorney fees) is a system that, over time, will ensure that only the affluent will be permitted to even run for office, much less win an election. If permitted to continue, this will spell the end of the citizen legislator.

      Like Armstrong, I won the lawsuit against me. It was at that point that they handed my family and I a bill for over $250,000 in legal fees for my troubles.

      To add to the injury told I can accept donations of no more than $249.99 from any one person this year to help cover a nearly insurmountable legal bill.

      To read my story please visit: http://www.davidlegal.org

      • So you saying you and Jennie are living paycheck to paycheck. How many other elected citizens are living paycheck to paycheck. there is the problem! Alaskan voters are electing thenselves who can’t balance a personal budget and budget beneath their means. You and Jennie choose your houses, vacations, and lifestyle. I’m sure your twos families could be happier living in a double-wide trailer for your income and then problem solved you two don’t need to ask the citizenry for bail-outs. And this goes for every Alaskan earning 100,OOO live under what they are eligible to afford. Besides…. What are they building a kingdom that will one day fade away.

      • You’re not helping yourself. In fact you’re proving, again, it’s the Eastman show.

        Go grift elsewhere.

      • So the court didn’t award legal fees properly. Does that stop you from suing the other party for your time and fees?

    • What? You aren’t surviving off the HUGE trust fund account your Mommy Sarah quit over? The birthright owner of the account? Oh where oh where has that Underdog gone? Lol. Paybacks a bitch. And it’s going to be brutally fatal. Hee haw!

  5. Yes, the Process is the Punishment! Just ask Trump and many others, esp David Eastman, a patriotic young legislator from Wasilla. The anti-Christian leftists will try to destroy you if you stand up for Truth and if youse don’t have means you could be relegated to the pauper’s den. imho

  6. Legislatures make pretty decent money, not counting perdiem and benefits, so why can’t she use her salary to cover the costs?

  7. I am truly, TRULY shocked that Scott Kendall, being the most upright and honorable POS of all time, did not offer his services PRO BONO for such a worthy cause such as the election of Ms. Armstrong!!!

    I honestly wonder how they shall split the proceeds from the ideocracy contributing unto their cause…. sigh…

  8. I doubt she’d come close to that amount by aug 31. She a dreamer. Alaskans are not the biggest givers. I mean our states volunteer service out numbers the amount of money Alaskans give. Most of Alaskans are either broke or living paycheck to paycheck. Also, Why would one financier contribute sorely to retire it if he wouldn’t had ulterior motives to control a legislator who is a freshman with little legislative experience? Little girl still dreamer that someone good-hearted will be generous without strings attached.

  9. Another thing people like Jennie are self centered and selfish while she knows about the maui fire and there are democrat Hawaiians facing worse than a debt of 45,000. She ought to make a monthly payment plan with her attorney Kendall like any other paying client.

  10. These criminals work hand in hand to fill their pockets with other people’s money. That is the sum of all the illegal, corrupt racketeering going on in our city and state. It is all about the money. These useless idiots are using our freedoms to attempt to marginalize everyone that doesn’t follow their agenda or interferes with the money laundering and theft that is occurring under the veil of political activism.

  11. If she’s deceitful in this aspect, then she will be deceitful in others. At what point are the voters truly represented by Armstrong? Never. The agenda is in progress.

    • Adults since 1950s hadn’t been reading to their children even if they bought collections of books. My mother’s family believed in reading and bought 1950s-60s books for their children but they didn’t read aloud to them just like my mother bought books for me. I didn’t start a new tradition on my family line to read aloud regularly and often to my grandmother’s grandchild. People don’t realize how important storytelling and reading books by writers and illustrators whom develop the characters that reflect us prepares the children to people and situations they may meet beforehand. If we had four generations of Alaskans where they didn’t rank bottom of the reading proficiency then maybe these new arrivals would have a harder time and more competitive campaign offices because of more Alaskans be mentally ready, equipped, and confident to lead their parents and grandparents communities than looking for someone else to do it for them. When people are scammed they either lack knowledge or they are aging and their mind is degenerating, or they have mental retardation.

Comments are closed.