“If I were governor, I would want a quick and fast investigation,” Brown said at a Capitol press conference. “I would open up everything that I had. I would ask the attorney general to come forward and go ahead and investigate because I would have nothing to hide.”
Earlier this week, a recording and transcript of Schweitzer’s speech given to a national trial lawyers group in Philadelphia on July 14 showed him saying that he took some steps to help Democrat Jon Tester unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Conrad Burns in 2006 in a race that was closely watched nationally.
The governor has since apologized for his comments and said he was just joking in the speech.
On Thursday, Attorney General Mike McGrath, a Democrat, turned down a request by Republican Secretary of State Brad Johnson to investigate the potential elections tampering that Schweitzer mentioned in his speech. McGrath said the citizen complaint that Johnson forwarded, which came from a Bozeman Republican activist, contained “no allegation supported by fact.”
The citizen complaint, filed by Tamara Hall of Bozeman, “is solely based on admittedly intemperate remarks of a speaker trying to be funny,” McGrath said.
Brown said Schweitzer “seems to be hiding behind the attorney general’s statement that he will not investigate the situation.”
“If everything is true about what he was saying, if it was just a joke, then why not just invite an investigation so we get this taken care of?” Brown said.
The Republican candidate said he hopes the allegations against Schweitzer aren’t true, “but I have to tell you the election in Montana is not a joke.”
“His comments were demeaning to Native Americans, they were demeaning to the Butte election office and they were demeaning to Montana as a whole,” Brown said.
In response, Schweitzer’s campaign manager, Harper Lawson, accused Brown of trying to make political hay.
“The state’s chief law enforcement agent n the attorney general n looked at the issue and made a public decision that this complaint was based on politics, not facts,” Lawson said. “Undoubtedly, the people who want to politicize the issue are crying foul. Those who realize that is was nothing more than an unfortunate joke have moved on.”
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