Colorado Republican candidate for governor Scott McInnis and his staff have refused for weeks to discuss payments made to him for plagiarized water articles by the Hasan Family Foundation and why part of that money was diverted to Invest 2 corporation.
First asked by the Colorado Independent July 22 why $112,500 of the $300,000 payment he received from the Hasan Family Foundation was paid to a company called “Invest 2, LLC,” McInnis said only “There is no reason.”
As of Thursday, McInnis spokesman Sean Duffy still had not answered a series of questions about the payments and Invest 2 emailed to the campaign by the Independent July 22.
The Independent asked to see the tax returns from Invest 2, for a list of the owners and employees, for information on what Invest 2 did with the money paid to the company by the Hasan Foundation and whether McInnis was acting as an employee of Invest 2 when he accepted the fellowship contract to write the water articles for the Hasans.
Duffy promised a response to what he agreed were “substantive” questions.
Dr. Aliya Hasan, a board member of the Hasan Family Foundation, last week said that McInnis arranged with the Foundation secretary to pay the $112,500 to Invest 2.
“He just randomly asked us one day to do it,” Hasan said. “He asked our secretary.”
Hasan said she did not know why McInnis made the Invest 2 payment arrangement.
Invest 2, LLC, was not listed among McInnis’ assets by the Denver Post back in April, when the McInnis campaign allowed a Post reporter to review portions of McInnis’ tax returns starting in 2005. Companies with similar names were listed in the Post article as assets, but Invest 2, LLC, was not among them. The Colorado Independent also looked at the McInnis tax returns in April and at his congressional disclosures and did not see Invest 2 listed as a McInnis asset. (McInnis did not allow reporters to make copies of his tax filings, so the Independent couldn’t check his returns again as of last week.)
Invest 2 was dissolved in 2006. If McInnis owned or partly owned the company, the entity should have been listed on his tax returns. McInnis told the Independent he paid taxes on all the Hasan foundation money.
McInnis has yet to report basic information about Invest 2, including who owned the company. Lori McInnis, Scott McInnis’ wife, is named on the Colorado Secretary of State’s website as the registered agent for the corporation.
The Post reported that other McInnis LLC’s, like “Invest 1,” were partnerships with his five siblings and his wife.
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Additional reporting by Scot Kersgaard.
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