MN-01: Minnesota Lawyer Files Ethics Complaint Against Hagedorn
WASHINGTON — A Minneapolis lawyer filed the first known ethics complaint against U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn on Tuesday, all but assuring Congressional investigators will take a look at questionable spending by his office over the past year, if they aren’t already doing so.
Sybil Dunlop, a business attorney at the Twin Cities-based law firm Greene Espel, which is influential in DFL circles, told the Minnesota Reformer in a phone interview that she filed the complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics after being contacted by the campaign of Dan Feehan, the Democrat running to unseat Hagedorn.
Her complaint alleges Hagedorn, a first term Republican, violated ethics rules by allowing more than $111,000 to be paid to Invocq Technologies, a company controlled by John Sample, an employee in Hagedorn’s office. It also alleges that Hagedorn’s former chief of staff, Peter Su, violated ethics rules by “quietly awarding his brother a contract that was significantly above market rate without justification.”
She’s referring to a printing contract granted to a Delaware company called Abernathy West that was paid almost $340,000 in the past year at taxpayer expense to send positive mailers about Hagedorn to his constituents. A spokesperson for the company confirmed to the Reformer that it is owned solely by Nien Su, Peter Su’s brother. Dunlop wrote in her complaint that investigators should determine whether that is true. Hagedorn fired Su over the matter, he has said previously.
https://minnesotareformer.com/2020/09/16/exclusive-minneapolis-lawyer-files-first-known-ethics-complaint-against-hagedorn/