Justice Department seeks Bachmann records

WASHINGTON — In the waning days of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign, her husband, Marcus Bachmann, allegedly wrote an email describing his efforts to raise much-needed funds through an outside “super PAC.”

That email now is in the hands of the U. S. Justice Department, which has subpoenaed records from the National Fiscal Conservative Political Action Committee as part of a federal grand jury investigation into potentially illegal coordination between the PAC and Bachmann’s campaign.

The grand jury subpoena, first reported in The New York Times, represents a major escalation in the multiple federal and state inquiries that rose from alleged election law violations brought forward last January by campaign whistleblower Peter Waldron.

“It’s a pivot point,” said Waldron, a Florida minister and longtime Republican operative who says he grew disillusioned with the ethical practices of the campaign.

Officials representing Bachmann and the NFC PAC did not respond to requests for comment Friday. Bachmann announced in May that she would not seek a fifth term in Congress next year.

Both Waldron and former Bachmann aide Andy Parrish have acknowledged publicly that they were contacted by the FBI.

However, the impaneling of a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., signifies that the federal inquiry goes deeper than previously known.

Parrish’s St. Paul, Minn., attorney, GOP activist John Gilmore, called it “a thunderclap.”

Parrish, meanwhile, was interviewed Friday by a special investigator for the Iowa Supreme Court, which is investigating allegations of hidden payments to state Sen. Kent Sorenson, Bachmann’s Iowa chairman.