Jon Ralston on the sheer ineptitude of Team Gibbons and why more questions are being raised about his legal defense fund

Friday, March 9, 2007 | 7:03 a.m.

You would think, the law of averages being what it is, that Team Gibbons would, simply by accident, occasionally get it right.

You would be wrong.

Defying all the conventional wisdom that it just has to get better, the governor has now landed himself in a new legal jackpot that may not be as serious as an FBI probe into his cozy relationship with a federal contractor, but one in which his guilt is all but assured. Jim Gibbons simply cannot explain why he did not report $169,100 in supposed "gifts" to his legal defense fund on his financial disclosure form in January. Instead, he filed an amended report a few days ago in what appears to be an ex post facto attempt (thus the probable reason why it wasn't reported earlier) to squelch any legal questions. But, as Secretary of State Ross Miller proved with a letter to Gibbons this week that contained a half-dozen inquiries, the governor has only raised more questions.

After two months-plus of nonstop ineptitude, the embattled governor and his coterie continue to forget the first principle of what to do when you are in a hole - i.e., stop digging. And now they have been buried by questions about his disclosure of money to help pay his legal bills.

What has occurred since I first inquired Friday about the legal defense fund's existence and then asked for the disclosure of the donors is a microcosm of this administration, which has a preternatural talent for haplessness. Team Gibbons first stonewalled and then, five days later, released the information with a deus ex machina explanation for potential improprieties that only raised the specter of others. The lack of attention to detail has characterized this administration's every move, the Annie Hall-like blase attitude, the credibility-crushing execution - it is Groundhog Day in Gibbonsville.

No one should begrudge Gibbons' desire to set up a legal defense fund last November. The then-candidate for governor had been beset by a trio of scandals, any of which could have caused him significant legal expense. L'Affaire Mazzeo, the illegal nanny and the lavish cruise with the e-mailing Trepp family (The hills are alive with the smell of money ).

So, notwithstanding his ability to buy a $10,000 gown for his wife to wear to the inaugural balls, Gibbons might well have believed even before an FBI probe was announced last month that he would need some extra cash to pay his potential legal bills.

Gibbons, yet to be sworn in, was a congressman at the time. So wouldn't the legal defense fund be subject to federal regulation? Gibbons' lawyer told the Associated Press that rules generally "don't apply to a candidate for state office even if he's a federal officeholder at the time."

Really? The federal law says this about legal defense money: "All the funds must be used to pay only for investigative, civil, criminal or other legal proceedings relating to an officeholder's election to office, official duties while in office and administrative or fundraising expenses of the trust."

The Mazzeo probe and questions about the illegal immigrant nanny don't apply. But questions about Gibbons securing federal contracts for his pal, Warren Trepp, would. Wouldn't they? And yet the fund was never sanctioned, as required, by the House Ethics Committee.

The Gibbons folks also clearly wanted to get around state laws prohibiting fundraising right before and during the legislative session, so they decided - either back then or after I asked - not to make them campaign money. But when Gibbons decided to construe them as gifts reported on his financial disclosure form, he not only made a mockery of the spirit of those forms, designed to show income from business or financial holdings, but he boxed himself in, too.

If all of the money is from 2006, why wasn't it on the annual disclosure? Who forgets $169,1000 in gifts?

If Gibbons keeps raising money from people who are not really gift-giving friends but political donors, isn't he also violating the spirit of that state law outlawing donations during the session? And couldn't the governor's legislative agenda be compromised by these secret (he doesn't have to disclose again until next year) "gifts" from interested parties while he is deciding which bills to sign?

My guess is by the time Miller gets the answers to his questions, more will have come up. In this case, it's not just that Team Gibbons won't be able to get it right. In this case, there are no right answers to find.