Minnesota Reformer: “U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn likes to boast on mail he sends to his constituents that his postcards are, ‘Proudly printed in Minnesota!'”
“What the Minnesota Republican fails to mention, though, is he paid a Texas-based company owned by one of his staff members more than $100,000 of taxpayer money to do some of that printing — a business relationship Congressional ethics experts say is a clear violation of government ethics rules. Hagedorn also paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for printing to a separate, mysterious company that has existed for less than a year and seems to have gone to great lengths to conceal its ownership, according to publicly available Congressional spending records and business registration filings. Both Hagedorn’s office and that company, Abernathy West LLC, did not respond to multiple requests asking who owns the business.”