Dissecting the Twardy Report. What Were the Other Six Bills on Campaign List? Whither Laura Jordan?

Democratic congressional candidate Christopher Donovan’s gambit to pay former United States Attorney Stanley Twardy to distance him from scandal in his campaign will not succeed if Twardy’s brief report receives wide circulation. The seeds of destruction are in the blinding omissions.

Twardy refers to a campaign document that featured seven bills before the 2012 session of the legislature. One of them was Senate Bill 357, the one that prompted the investigation that has so far included the arrest of Donovan campaign finance chief Robert Braddock. What were the other six bills? Is there a connection between them and other Donovan campaign fundraising tactics? Twardy won’t say. He declines to release the document, undermining any claim to independence. Expect other campaigns to howl for disclosure.

Then there is the unsettling silence of top Donovan legislative staff attorney Laura Jordan. She refused to meet with Twardy but she continues to work for Donovan as a public employee, apparently still in his good graces Why won’t she cooperate if Donovan, as Twardy opines, knew nothing of the dirty doings going on in his campaign? Could she have been the conduit between the campaign and the powerful engine of doing favors for friends in the speaker’s office? She was, until recently, in a close personal relationship with fired Donovan campaign manager Joshua Nassi, who has been identified as one of three co-conspirators with Braddock. Nassi has not been charged with a crime.

Imagine the national outcry if a top lawyer to the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives refused to cooperate with an investigation commissioned by the speaker to uncover wrongdoing in his campaign. Silence followed by inaction would not be an option. There would be consequences.