Missouri board will investigate Galloway at Hawley’s request, Hawley announces
A state board will investigate Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway at Sen. Josh Hawley’s request, the GOP senator announced on Twitter Wednesday.
Hawley, a Missouri Republican, posted a letter that his legal team received last week from a Jefferson City attorney representing the Missouri State Board of Accountancy informing him that the board would open an investigation into Galloway, the Democratic nominee for Missouri governor.
The letter follows a complaint Hawley filed in February.
In the letter attorney Samantha Green does not offer a timeline for the investigation, but advises that Hawley will be informed when it is completed.
Within minutes of Hawley’s tweet, Uniting Missouri, a PAC that supports Galloway’s opponent, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, began promoting the news of an investigation into Galloway less than two months before the November election.
Earlier in the day, the PAC had launched an ad referencing a “serious ethical complaint” against Galloway in reference to previous coverage of Hawley’s request to the board.
The board is part of the Missouri Department of Commerce and Insurance, which oversees accounting standards. Its members are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Missouri Senate.
Galloway said in a Wednesday afternoon phone call with reporters that Hawley filed the complaint because he was unhappy with the results of the audit by her office and that she had received no contact from the board until Wednesday afternoon.
“The timing suggests a clear coordination in the shadows to make this an issue for an election season ad,” Galloway said, noting that board had been silent on the matter for months.
“This is not a non-partisan board. These members are appointed by the governor. In fact, current members are donors to his campaign,” Galloway said in reference to contributions to Parson’s campaign from board members Nick Myers and Robert Whelan. “It’s clear political retaliation for an audit that was conducted with professionalism and by the book.”
Hawley, a first-term senator who is considered a potential candidate for president in 2024, filed the complaint against Galloway in response to the release of an audit by her office of his two-year tenure as Missouri attorney general.
Galloway’s audit found that Hawley may have misused state resources to benefit his successful 2018 campaign for U.S. Senate, but concluded that whether Missouri law had been broken was unclear because of the use of private email.
The audit was spurred by 2018 reporting by The Kansas City Star on the role of Hawley’s political consultant in advising the operations of the attorney general’s office.
“By allowing campaign-paid consultants to interact and advise (attorney general’s office) staff,” the report said, “former Attorney General Hawley potentially used state resources for political purposes.”
Hawley’s legal team alleged in its February complaint that Galloway’s audit was politically motivated, noting her candidacy for governor and her hiring of David Kirby — campaign manager for his 2018 opponent, former Sen. Claire McCaskill — as a staff aide.
“Ms. Galloway’s employment, at a senior level, of a political operative who personally promoted the very attacks against Mr. Hawley that Galloway was supposed to be independently reviewing is deeply inappropriate and appears to violate GAO (Government Accountability Office) auditing standards,” the complaint from Hawley’s team states.
Galloway’s office said in February that Kirby did not have a role in the audit.
Hawley’s complaint also pointed to an internal auditor’s office email, which was inadvertently forwarded to the Missouri attorney general’s office.
Pam Allison, the lead auditor on the inquiry, told colleagues in the email that she was “thinking I’ll just drop the confidentiality paragraph in the report and beef up the personal email/personal calendar section,” a change that Hawley’s team alleged was unethical.
Reached by phone Wednesday, Green, the attorney who sent the letter to Hawley’s team, referred a request for comment to the board’s executive director, Patty Faenger.
Faenger did not immediately respond to phone calls or an email.
This story was originally published September 23, 2020 at 1:39 PM with the headline "Missouri board will investigate Galloway at Hawley’s request, Hawley announces."
