Woman Says GOP Activist Supports Her Claim That Bachmann Campaign Stole Email List

A Johnston woman who has accused a Milo state legislator of stealing her email list told the Des Moines Register she welcomes an Iowa Senate ethics investigation in the case, including statements “that denote first-hand knowledge of the crime.”

Barb Heki served as a coordinator of home-school supporters for U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign that participated in the January 2012 Iowa caucuses. She said in a statement last week she was grateful former Bachmann campaign aide Chris Dorr of Van Meter had acknowledged removing an email list from Heki’s computer in Bachmann’s Urbandale campaign office.

“This public disclosure is a significant milestone. The false statements made about my computer interactions with others are already negated by other testimony and evidence,” Heki said in the Register story. “Further, anyone who infers that I ever gave anyone my personal computer for any reason, or used my personal file of the homeschool database to give information to anyone at any time, or that it was easily available to others, or unknown to them that it was off limits, needs to consider the consequences of perjury, as those are outright fabrications."

The Iowa Senate Ethics Committee voted 4-2 last week to ask Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Cady to appoint a special investigator to look into two ethics complaints against state Sen. Kent Sorenson, R-Milo. One complaint involves the alleged theft of Heki’s email list in 2011 by Sorenson from the Bachman campaign office in Urbandale.

Another complaint accuses Sorenson of breaking a Senate rule by accepting $7,500 a month to work as Bachmann’s Iowa campaign chairman. The rule is aimed at preventing influence buying. Sorenson has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, saying he is a victim of a “witchhunt.”

Dorr, who helped the campaign with technical issues, has attested in an affidavit that he never witnessed Sorenson take the list and he never saw Sorenson use any computer other than his own. Dorr said he had loaded a list from Heki’s laptop onto a portable drive, adding it was an open file on what he assumed to be a campaign laptop, the newspaper said.

Sorenson told the ethics panel he never took, participated in, or directed the taking of any list from anyone’s computer.

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Heki has filed a civil suit in Polk County District Court accusing Sorenson of taking the list from her computer and using it to send campaign materials to home-school families. Heki says she was blamed after the emails were sent, leading to her firing from the campaign and her removal from state and national home-school advocacy boards. The Urbandale Police Department investigated the alleged theft.

Sorenson's attorney, Theodore Sporer of the Sporer & Flanagan law firm in Des Moines, told Patch last year that Sorenson has committed no crime.

"Obviously, Kent denies any wrongdoing," Sporer said. "He did not steal anything from Barb Heki or take anything in her possession. We know nothing about this criminal complaint."

Sorenson was Bachmann's Iowa campaign chairman at the time of the theft but defected to Texas Rep. Ron Paul's organization just a week before the January caucuses. Sporer said Sorenson's departure from the Bachmann camp was in no way tied to the allegations raised by Heki.

Our earlier stories on this issue:

Bachmann Aide to Break Silence on Sorenson Allegations