Politics

Former top aide: Bachmann still won’t pay campaign workers who haven’t signed nondisclosure agreements

Gregg Re Editor
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Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann is still refusing to pay five Iowa staffers who worked on her unsuccessful run for president in 2012, a former top aide claimed Thursday. Bachmann, he said, is requiring them to sign non-disclosure agreements before they are paid.

Those nondisclosures would prohibit them from talking about any illegal activity they may have witnessed during the campaign.

Peter Waldron, the Bachmann campaign’s director of national faith outreach, said the former presidential candidate’s finance chairman repeatedly promised the staffers that they would receive financial compensation for their services.

But that chairman, James Pollack, was simply playing the workers for fools, Waldron wrote in the press release, published on Christian Newswire. (RELATED OPINION — Shame on you, Michele Bachmann: Apologize for linking Clinton deputy to Muslim Brotherhood infiltration scheme)

“I feel a moral obligation to see that my Christian brothers and sisters are paid for worked performed in good faith,” Waldron said. “I’ve continually communicated by telephone and email with Mr. Pollack for one year, but he broke every promise made to me to pay the staff. I appealed to Dr. [Marcus] Bachmann for help. … It is sobering to think that a Christian member of Congress would betray her testimony to the Lord and the public by withholding earned wages from deserving staff.”

Bachmann suspended her run for president on Jan. 4, 2012.

Waldron, Salon.com reported late Thursday, said the nondisclosure demands stemmed “from the campaign’s alleged misuse of an email list. A home-schooling group accused the Bachmann campaign of stealing the list, which was contained on a volunteer’s laptop, and then using it to fundraise for the campaign.”

“This agreement came out of left field,” Waldron said in his press release.

“Recently Mr. Pollack demanded that each unpaid staff member sign a non-disclosure agreement that prohibits any discussion of any criminal, moral, and/or unethical behavior witnessed during Mrs. Bachmann’s campaign in Iowa. In fact, Mr. Pollack insists that each staffer not speak to law enforcement and/or lawyers without first speaking with Mrs. Bachmann’s attorneys.”

Waldron, who was arrested and briefly jailed on terrorism charges in Uganda in 2006, noted that Bachmann’s congressional campaign has $2 million cash on hand — more than enough, he claims, to pay the five presidential staffers the money he says they’re owed.

In December, Bachmann paid off most of her presidential campaign’s debt by transferring approximately $750,000 from her congressional coffer to her presidential fund. Her presidential campaign remained $170,000 in debt at the end of November.

The late-in-the-game housekeeping is nothing new for Bachmann’s presidential campaign: ABC reported in December that the campaign wrecked an extravagant golf cart styled like a Rolls Royce, then paid the rental and repair fees almost a year late. The rental company, Turf Cars, eventually sued.

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