Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is facing more controversy for using a contact list from the Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators, or NICHE, to fundraise during the 2012 Republican presidential primary.
The Iowa Republican and NBC News report Bachmann's Iowa campaign manager signed a sworn affidavit on Sept. 4 blaming another staffer for the contact list misuse. NBC News reports:
The Sept. 4 affidavit – first reported by the Iowa Republican and obtained Friday by NBC News – was written by Bachmann's Iowa adviser Eric Woolson, and accuses former State Sen. Kent Sorenson of stealing the list from another Bachmann staffer. Sorenson was the campaign’s state chairman at the time.
"We took it," Woolson says Sorenson told him.
Woolson isn't the first to accuse Sorenson of misusing the contact list. In July 2012, former campaign staffer Barb Heki filed a lawsuit against Bachmann, Sorenson others when she and her husband were removed from the NICHE board of directors after the incident.
“The one thing I can tell you is that I have first-hand witnesses to Kent confessing that he stole the database,” Heki said.
Bachmann's campaign called the move a "mistake" in Dec. 2011, at the height of the controversy.
“When notified by NICHE, the Campaign began working with NICHE to take immediate corrective action to ensure that list was permanently removed from any Campaign records and to pay the fair-market value of the use of the list," Campaign Manager Keith Nahigian said. "The campaign regrets any inconvenience this mistake may have caused and is working to enact additional safeguards to ensure that this does not happen again."
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