Most Dornan Subpoenas for Records Not Heeded

Most of the organizations ordered by former Rep. Robert K. Dornan to turn over recordsrelating to alleged voter fraud in the November election are ignoring his demand, lawyers said Tuesday. The stalemate sets the stage for a likely confrontation next month, when Congress could take up the dispute.

Of the two dozen groups that received subpoenas last week from the losing congressional candidate, only a handful have complied, Dornan attorney Bill Hart said.

Hart said he had received some records from the district attorney’s office and from Fidelity Federal Bank, which held the account for a political group formed during the 1996 campaign. Hart said he hopes to receive records from the register of voters and from more banks.

But the organizations at the center of the voter fraud allegations are fighting Dornan’s demands. They include Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, the Santa Ana immigrant rights group that is the subject of state and local investigations into possible voter fraud; and Sanchez for Congress, the committee that helped Democratic challenger Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) unseat Dornan in November.

Those organizations are contending that Dornan’s demands for documents are unconstitutional.

The subpoenas were issued last week by U.S. District Judge Gary L. Taylor at Dornan’s request. They seek a range of financial, personnel and political records from the organizations. Dornan hopes the records will bolster his claim that he lost to Sanchez--by 984 votes--because of pervasive voter fraud.

It is unclear what would happen if the congressional task force orders the organizations to turn over documents and they still refuse. An attorney for Hermandad, for example, said that he would probably ask the full committee--and even the entire Congress--to vote on the matter. If Hermandad still lost, he said, he would ask a federal judge to intervene.

On Tuesday, an attorney for the Sanchez committee asked the congressional committee handling Dornan’s challenge to quash the subpoenas. Dornan is demanding that the Sanchez group produce, among other things, a list of all campaign workers and volunteers.

“These subpoenas violate our constitutional rights,” said Wylie Aitken, who represents Sanchez for Congress. “They trespass on the right to freely associate and the right to engage in political activity.”

Hart, the Dornan attorney, said that the groups are ignoring legal subpoenas issued as part of a legitimate probe: “They are working together to uniformly stonewall the production of documents.”

Hart said that, in addition to Hermandad and Sanchez for Congress, he had received no records from One Stop Immigration, the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, Rancho Santiago College, Catholic Charities of Orange County and the Laborers International Union of North America.

Dornan’s investigators said that those organizations registered voters who cast ballots in the 46th Congressional District race and that they want to look at the records to determine if any of them were not citizens at the time they registered.