FEC Likely to Let Cranston PAC Pay Son’s Bills

Attorneys for the Federal Election Commission are preparing to allow Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) to use funds from his political action committee to pay legal costs incurred by his son during an investigation of the so-called “Keating Five” scandal.

In a draft advisory opinion, FEC attorneys have proposed granting Cranston’s request to reimburse lawyers for his son, Kim, with funds from the Committee for a Democratic Consensus, a PAC operated by the senator. The full commission is expected to vote on the recommendation today.

The draft opinion was written in response to a letter sent to the commission on March 2 by Bruce H. Turnbull, a lawyer representing Cranston, asking whether federal election law would permit the committee to pay the lawyers’ fees that Kim Cranston incurred when he was interviewed by the FBI and the Senate Ethics Committee about his role in the Keating case.

After a two-year investigation, the Ethics Committee last year rebuked Cranston for improperly soliciting contributions from Charles H. Keating Jr. between 1987 and 1989, at the same time that he intervened with federal regulators on behalf of the now-defunct Lincoln Savings & Loan, which was owned by Keating.

Kim Cranston was questioned by the FBI and the Ethics Committee about his role in soliciting contributions from Keating for the now-moribund Center for Participation in Democracy, a voter registration group established by his father. Kim Cranston serves on the center’s board of directors. It was one of several voter registration efforts related to Cranston that received $850,000 from Keating.

Last month, Kim Cranston said that he still owed his lawyers $5,000. He said that the center has unpaid legal bills of $50,000 for work stemming from the scandal.