MADDOW:
One of the stranger half secret little twists this year's presidential politics is that the presumed
Republican front
-runner, the candidate who says he is the one to beat, whomever everyone seems willing to agree is the one to beat, actually has a lot of people on his own side who do not like him. In
South Carolina
, one group of
Republicans
responded to news of
Mitt Romney
the front-runner by trying to draft
New Jersey
Governor
Chris Christie
to run against him. The
Tea Party FreedomWorks
says it will fund an effort to block Mr.
Romney
from becoming the nominee. Another
Tea Party
group, the
Western Representation PAC
, has a stop
Romney
campaign. Also, the
Club for Growth
, a heavyweight these days in Republican fiscal policy, calls Mr.
Romney
a flip flopper. And those are just the folks on the right, his own side, who do not like
Mitt Romney
for his politics or the way he combs his hair or wears his khakis or whatever. This guy,
Fred Karger
, is actually completing against
Mitt Romney
for the Republican nomination. Mr.
Karger
is a little known candidate, which is a polite way of saying he doesn't really have a chance. But Mr.
Karger
has made what seems to be a substantive legal complaint about
Mitt Romney
. In June, he wrote to state officials in
Massachusetts
saying he thinks Mr.
Romney
may have violated
Massachusetts
voting laws in
2009
and
2010
when he voted in the
special election
for
Ted Kennedy
's old
Senate
seat won by Republican Senator
Scott Brown
. Mr.
Romney
voted once in the primary and once in the
general election
in
Massachusetts
. At the time that he cast those ballots, he claimed he was living in his son's basement in
Belmont
,
Massachusetts
, having sold his own multimillion dollar estate there in
April 2009
. His son's basement at the time was an unfinished space -- meaning that
Mitt Romney
, a multimillionaire, was claiming himself to be the legal resident of his son's unfinished basement. He is claiming under
Massachusetts law
that his son's unfinished basement was the center of his domestic, social, and civic life.
Massachusetts
officials told us when we asked there would be no investigation into these claims against
Romney
made by Mr.
Karger
. But despite having a number of people on his own side who really ostentatiously do not like him and are willing to say so out loud,
Mitt Romney
, of course, also has his fans -- people who do like him and write rather large checks to further his political career. He has powerful and wealthy people who really like him, want him to run and want him to win. We're just not necessarily allowed to know who those people are. In March of this year, "
The Wall Street Journal
" reported that the
Romney
campaign had begun a 15-city tour to shake the trees for big donations, as in $50,000 big donations. The campaign set a goal of $50
million
to be raised by early summer, saying they thought that would be enough to scare off anybody thinking of wondering into
Mitt Romney
's race. We know now from campaign records that some of
Mitt Romney
's very rich friends got out their fancy checkbooks and their
Montblanc pens
and started inking zeros, even though they didn't make their $50
million
goal. One of the big donations he got was from
W Spann LLC
. Now,
W Spann LLC
is a little mysterious. It is listed -- its headquarters are listed as being on
Madison Avenue
in
New York City
. But this group, this
Spann Company
, was only created when it was registered with the state of
Delaware
, land of mysterious corporations, back in March. The incorporation papers were filed by this young
Boston
lawyer. We don't know who her client was or what this new corporation planned to do as a business. We do know that this particular lawyer specializes in something called
wealth transfer
strategies. And the very next month, after she filed the incorporation papers for
W Spann LLC
,
W Spann LLC
did, in fact, transfer a whole bunch of wealth.
In April
,
W Spann
transferred $
1 million
-- not to Mr.
Romney's
campaign directly, but to a
PAC
that's being run for his benefit. Despite seemingly to exist as a single page with three stock photos and a giant "contribute" button and some boilerplate talked about candidates, plural, that
PAC Restore Our Future
, is really all about
Mitt Romney
.
Restore Our Future
is run by
Mitt Romney
's backers. They say they are raising
money
for
Mitt Romney
. They have had
Mitt Romney
solicit donations for their pro-
Mitt Romney PAC
at the
PAC
's events. It's a
Mitt Romney
gig. They raised more than 12
million
bucks in the first half of the year.
And 1
/3 of what they raised came in
million dollar
chunks from four sources, including the aforementioned mysterious
W Spann LLC
, a
company
that seems to have done pretty much nothing besides give $
1 million
on
April 28th
for the betterment of
Mitt Romney
's political career. On
July 11th
, two weeks before this
Mitt Romney PAC
had to file its report with
federal elections
officials, two weeks before that
PAC
was to reveal its donors, this
company
,
W Spann LLC
, shut down. Its
wealth transfer
specialist lawyer filed this certificate of cancellation with the state of
Delaware
. So, whatever this
company
was supposed to be, whatever it was, after founding itself, submitting a single $
1 million
check on
Mitt Romney
's behalf, the mysterious
W Spann LLC
was then officially dissolved.
That's all
it did as a
company
.
That's what
the
company
was for, apparently -- to deliver
1 million
bucks for
Mitt Romney
's political benefit via a source that soon disappeared, a source that could not be traced. So, where did that
million
dollars come from? Who gave that
money
? Mr.
Romney's
old
investment firm
,
Bain Capital
, says
W Spann
was not affiliated with them or anybody that works for them. Next guess, anyone? Was it a
Girl Scout
troop maybe? You know, cookie sales this year, I hear, were great. Could it have been the government of
China
maybe? How about a Mexican drug cartel? How about
Mitt Romney
himself? We do not know. We just do not know. Joining us now is the investigative reporter who got everybody asking these questions today by putting these dots together --
Michael Isikoff
,
NBC News
national investigative correspondent.
Michael
, congratulations on breaking this story. Appreciate having you here.
MICHAEL ISIKOFF, NBC NEWS NATIONAL INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT:
Well, thank you,
Rachel
. Good
to be with you
.
MADDOW:
Do we know whose
money
this is? Is there any way to find out? Could it be foreign
money
? Could it be
Romney's
own
money
? Is there any way to know?
ISIKOFF:
It certainly could be anything. It's actually a rather intriguing
Washington
mystery. You know, you certainly laid out a -- one scenario that people have speculated about, the
Bain Capital
connection.
Ropes & Gray
, the
law firm
that
Cameron Casey
works for, has long represented
Bain Capital
, the firm that
Mitt Romney
once headed.
Bain Capital
does have an office in that 590 Madison
Avenue
skyscraper that
W Spann
listed its address as. But
Bain Capital
's spokesman in a rather emphatic denial to me said nobody at the firm is part of this entity. Now, that does raise the question, could it be clients of the firm or could it be somebody else in 590 Madison
Avenue
? There's UBS. There's
Bank of America
. There's CEMEX. There's a lot of other blue chip firms that have this address. What we do know is I spoke to the management
company
at 590 Madison
Avenue
. They say they never heard of
W Spann
and have no such tenant.
MADDOW:
Why did you figure this out? Why did you start chasing the
W Spann
connection
in the first place
? What about it stood out to you?
ISIKOFF:
Well, first of all, the
million
dollars. You don't see that every day. And when you see a huge check like that, it does kind of raise your eyebrows.
And I
saw caught -- this was filed in the
Restore Our Future
filings with the
FEC
late on Friday. There were a couple stories over the weekend that said people couldn't explain where this was. And that got my juices going. We did a full
LexisNexis
search, database search on Monday, and found the
Delaware
court papers. I called the
Delaware
secretary of state's office. I ordered the court incorporation and dissolution papers, saw the dates, saw the name
Cameron Casey
, and was able to sort of piece what we've gotten so far together.
MADDOW:
Is there any evidence that this
company
ever did anything other than form, give a
million
dollars to
Mitt Romney
, and disband? Is there any evidence they did anything else?
ISIKOFF:
Not in the public record. And that's precisely the question. And that's why there's going to be calls tomorrow from some
campaign finance reform
groups for a
Justice Department
and
Federal Election Commission
investigation into this. Look, it is a
federal crime
to give
money
in the name of another. That's called a straw donation. The
Justice Department
has made vigorous prosecutions of this over the years. This is sort of can be a form of this. If
W Spann
had no other purpose but was only set up for -- to funnel
money
to restore our future, the
PAC
, then it is arguably a straw donation. Somebody is trying to conceal their identity by using this arguably sham
company
to make this donation.
MADDOW:
Michael Isikoff
,
NBC news
national investigative correspondent --
Michael
, I love the way you think. I love this work. And the way you do it on this. Thank you for following this trailing and thanks for joining us.
ISIKOFF:
Thanks, Rachel.
“ ”