Ed Martin Wrote 150 Blog Posts While "Too Busy" to File Financial Disclosure Form

As Matt Blunt's Chief of Staff, Ed Martin deleted emails that were supposed to be saved under state Sunshine Laws, and then fired and smeared an employee who asked him to follow the law. He now is trying to run as a candidate who really, really values transparency.

Ironic then, as Sean at FiredUp Missouri pointed out, that Ed Martin finally got around to filing his Ethics Disclosure required by federal law...300 days late. Martin was required by law to disclose the details of his finances within 30 days of raising $5,000, but after requesting numerous extensions he only got around to it on April 29 of this year, 300 days after he originally reached the threshold on July 10 of 2009.

Check out the litany of excuses "Mr. Transparency" used while stalling his ethics report:

In letters to the ethics committee, Martin said he needed an extension of 60 days because he was a “private citizen who is running his own business.” He later followed up with a request for a 90-day extension, saying he had just officially declared his candidacy Sept. 30.

“Before that, I was testing the waters and trying to decide,” he wrote. “I am a private citizen with my own small business and family (wife, three kids).”

In early February, Martin again wrote the ethics committee apologizing for the delay in filing, attributing it to his inexperience in running for office. He also asked a number of follow-up questions about the process, including whether his wife had to list all the boards on which she holds a position.

Wow, that's amazing. I didn't realize you could get out of ethics laws by being a "private citizen." Of course, I also hadn't realized you could request free hunting permits as the Chief of Staff.

But more to the point, between September 30 and April 30, while Ed Martin was waaaay too busy to deal with pesky things like ethics reports, he managed to write 150 posts on his blog edmartinforcongress.com . He also somehow found the time to hold a Super Bowl Party, a trivia night fundraiser, hang out with former football players, and of course go to tea party rallies, along with probably hundreds of other events. Naturally, there are lots of things you can do when you're running for office, but the law asks you to file Ethics Disclosures all the same.

But of course, as we've seen many times before, Ed Martin seems to think that laws are for little people.