(The Center Square) – The Second Amendment Foundation announced Wednesday that the Washington State Attorney General’s Office has agreed to end a three-year investigation into alleged wrongdoing by SAF and its personnel. The AGO did not find any evidence of wrongdoing.
“He started this investigation with sending us seven civil investigative demands, and we had to supply everything we had, from banking records to everything in our file cabinets, and all the TV radio ads we ran, and all correspondence with supporters and vendors,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb told The Center Square on Wednesday. “It was very invasive. We turned over probably some close to 20,000 documents to the office, and they subpoenaed everybody we do business with.”
Bob Ferguson, now governor, was the state attorney general at the time the investigation was launched.
Gottlieb said the Bellevue-based SAF was never provided information from the AGO regarding what it was looking for.
“It was very intimidating,” he added. “And I really don’t know for sure what they were really looking for because there’s nothing there. They were arguing that we weren’t complying with consumer protection laws in the state of Washington and charitable solicitation laws in the state of Washington.”
The agreement between SAF and the AGO includes SAF’s withdrawal of its pending Public Records Act request for records from the Attorney General’s office.
“This investigation, launched by Bob Ferguson in an effort to discredit our work on behalf of gun owners and the Second Amendment, was a politically motivated legal fishing expedition,” Gottlieb declared triumphantly in a Wednesday news release. “Ferguson’s witch hunt wasted three years of our time and cost us thousands of man-hours and more than $200,000. We’re convinced this happened because he is a devoted anti-gun rights politician, and we are a national organization whose mission is to protect and defend the Second Amendment.”
Gottlieb told The Center Square that the last three years of combatting the AGO have cost the organization financially and him personally.
“We complied, and they did depositions with people on staff. I was deposed. It was extremely invasive. It’s totally 100% political. It was aimed at trying to destroy the organization,” he said. “They ended up costing us a couple hundred thousand dollars over three years and several thousand man-hours to provide the AG with all the materials that they wanted.”
The Center Square reached out to the AGO for comment on the settlement.
“The foundation is agreeing to dismiss their own lawsuit against the AG’s Office – dismissing their own lawsuit is hardly a ‘vindication’ of their allegations,” AGO Communications Director Mike Faulk said in an email. “SAF wanted to walk away from their litigation against the state, and we agreed not to seek fees if they dismissed their case. That’s mainly what this agreement does.”
Faulk continued: “We also agreed to withdraw some years-old requests for documents and depositions, and close our previous investigation, but in no way does that mean SAF complied with the law. Nothing in the settlement prevents the state from investigating SAF further or pursuing the allegations of wrongdoing that have been widely reported. And nothing in the settlement in any way suggests that SAF has complied with the law. This settlement simply lets us avoid having to deal with further litigation over SAF’s political animus claims that two courts have already rejected.”
The Center Square asked Gottlieb why SAF settled its case with the AGO if it felt momentum was on its side.
“We settled for a couple reasons: One, of course is that the appeals court ruled 3-0 in our favor and sent it back down to the trial judge,” Gottlieb said, noting subsequent court salvos would have cost more time and money, sharing that his own wife has spent at least 1,000 hours on the case over the last year, and she’s not on the payroll. “So we’re looking at a number of years, and another couple hundred thousand dollars … all the waste of our time, which takes away from our mission, defending Second Amendment rights.”
