Full McDaniel campaign finance docs released. Web error caused them not to be posted

A day after the secretary of state's website crashed, and two days after Chris McDaniel's financial documents were posted in an incomplete form, an itemized list of donations is now available on the website for McDaniel's campaign for lieutenant governor.

Those within the McDaniel campaign said Thursday they had submitted a full list early on Tuesday rather than just a one-page summary that appeared on the secretary of state's website Wednesday, and that technical problems, which later caused large parts of the website to stop functioning Thursday, were to blame for the incomplete report.

A news release Friday from the office of Secretary of State Michael Watson confirmed those claims. According to the release, although the website first experienced a "sudden outage" on Thursday, "upon research, it was determined the cause of the crash began affecting SOS web applications prior to Thursday’s crash."

"A proper investigation by Secretary of State officials into the campaign finance filing of Lieutenant Governor candidate Chris McDaniel revealed a system error appears to be the cause of the one-page (excluding itemization) campaign finance report visible on the Secretary of State’s website prior to the web outage," according to Secretary of State's press release. "An itemized Report of Contributions and Disbursements for McDaniel is now visible on the Campaign Finance website."

Others, including McDaniel's opponent, incumbent Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, and the main candidates for governor, saw their full reports posted shortly after the deadline Wednesday evening.

"The McDaniel campaign filed its quarterly report well before the state's deadline for submission — with Secretary of State Watson's timestamp to prove it," McDaniel campaign spokesperson Nicole Tardif said in a statement.

Questions remain after analysis of McDaniel's full filing, including that the summary page of the full report, posted on the website Friday, had differences from the summary page that was posted on its own Wednesday. One of those differences was in the section where the candidate is meant to sign the documents. On the summary page posted Wednesday, McDaniel's name was typed out under the signature section. On the one posted Friday, it was not.

A spokesperson for the McDaniel campaign said it seemed that was an issue created when the secretary of state's office fixed the initial report, and that you cannot file a report without the inclusion of a signature. It is not possible to file through the system without it, the McDaniel spokesperson said. The spokesperson added that if a new report had truly been filed, the secretary of state would have labeled it as an amended report, rather than replacing the Wednesday version entirely.

Then there are the details of the contributions McDaniel received, which some — including those within the Hosemann campaign — have now raised questions about.

McDaniel has chosen to raise money through a committee, rather than as an individual, as he did in previous campaigns. Candidate committees are required to file a statement of organization with the secretary of state within 48 hours of receiving or spending more than $200.

According to the Friday filing, McDaniel passed that mark on Jan. 3. Yet, according to a spokesperson for Watson, as of Friday afternoon the office has yet to receive a statement of organization. Failure to comply with those rules can result in penalties being assessed by the Mississippi Ethics Commission.

The McDaniel campaign said that the number cited in the Wednesday summary, $677,775.77, is an accurate accounting of all the funds the campaign raised between January and April. That would have well-outpaced Hosemann, who reported raising just short of $193,000.

Included in that nearly $678,000 is $465,000 that the campaign received from McDaniel's own now-defunct Political Action Committee, "Hold The Line."

McDaniel announced last month that he would be returning that money to the PAC, which would then return the money to Virginia-based nonprofit American Exceptionalism Institute. In total, the McDaniel committee received $469,900 from Hold The Line this period, according to the filing. It returned all but $4,900 to Hold The Line.

Without the $465,000 that was donated to McDaniel by Hold the Line during the period, the $677,775.77 total is reduced to about $213,000. The $465,000 will never be spent by the campaign after it was returned.

McDaniel's committee reported donations that did not fall within the period window of January-April. The filing includes $9,800 from donations in the first two weeks of May, after the period. Hosemann's filing does not include May donations. If McDaniel's returned funds and the May donations are all removed, the total drops to about $203,000.

Of that roughly $203,000, McDaniel donated $43,400 of his own funds to the campaign in five separate donations. Of the remaining nearly $160,000, about half was previously reported in a disclosure McDaniel made in January.

Hosemann, who also donated to his own campaign between January and April, to the tune of $3,750, in a single donation, criticized McDaniel's Friday filing.

“This newest filing is still a disaster and it is incomplete," Hosemann said in a statement Friday afternoon. "It clearly includes funds that had been previously reported, including $465,000 from a dark money PAC (which McDaniel returned) … The truth is, new contributions which had not previously been reported are a small percentage of what he claimed to raise.”

McDaniel and Hosemann's filings also feature some interesting donors. Both candidates received funds from family members and known associates.

Scott Brewster, who donated $1,000 to McDaniel, may be a familiar name to those who have followed the state senator's political career. Brewster, a former high-ranking official in McDaniel's 2014 campaign for U.S. Senate, was one of three men found locked inside the Hinds County Courthouse in the early morning after vote counting had finished in that primary. The Hinds County Sheriff's Office later announced it had found no evidence of criminal activity.

Tardif said the McDaniel campaign would like to get back to the issues of the race.

"Delbert 'the Democrat' Hosemann is trying his hardest to lie, cheat, and steal his way into re-election," Tardif said in a statement. "Of course he jumped on the opportunity to spread lies while the Secretary of State's website was out of commission. Now, can we get back to talking about the real issues?"

Primary election day will be Aug. 8, with a potential runoff coming on Aug. 29.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Secretary of state says system error cause of campaign document issues