Anti-Coffee Ad Donors Are Mysterious No-names

Senate President Pro Tem Glenn Coffee's critics spent about $80,000 on ads attacking the state Senate leader and used a Texas advertising firm favored by Oklahoma Democrats to create them, records show.

The critics, operating as "Citizens For Transparency," is "a secretive organization whose only identified members are a 24-year-old substitute teacher and a two 21-year-old University of Oklahoma students," The Oklahoman's Nolan Clay reports today.

Read all of Clay's article at http://www.newsok.com/anti-glenn-coffee-ad-details-murky/article/3364375?custom_click=pod_headline_ae.

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Report: Stipe Transfers Oil And Gas Interests

Former State Senator Gene Stipe has formed a new company and transferrered his oil and gas interests to it, The Oklahoman's Nolan Clay reports today. State Rep. Mike Reynolds, R-Oklahoma City, confirmed he discovered the transfers and informed the FBI. He said he did so because he questions how Stipe legally can transfer property after being found mentally incompetent. Read the entire story at www.newsok.com.

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Oklahoman: Phipps-Stipe Investigation Could Be Expanded To Include State, Edmondson Says

The Oklahoman reports in its Sunday edition that Attorney General Drew Edmondson may pursue charges in the campaign finance scandal swirling around southeastern Oklahoma abstract company owner Steve Phipps and his partner, former Senator Gene Stipe.

Reporter Nolan Clay writes that Edmondson confirmed a meeting with U. S. Attorney Sheldon Sperling about the federal investigation into the straw donor scheme and has "offered our services," Edmondson said.

It's a significant development since some campaign finance violations would not be covered under federal law, but would be covered under Oklahoma law.

The federal probe results are being presented to a grand jury sitting in Muskogee with investigative work being handled by the FBI.

Thus far, alleged illegal donations to the campaigns of Governor Brad Henry Henry, Auditor and Inspector Jeff McMahan, former State Rep. Mike Mass and Congressman Dan Boren have been revealed. The donations are tied to associates of Phipps and Stipe, whose abstract company empire is regulated by McMahan. He, Henry and Boren say they had no idea that tens of thousands of dollars came into their campaigns from straw donors, or those given the money to donate by others.

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McMahan-Phipps Trip Companions Identified

The Oklahoman reports today that some of those involved in the federal investigation into alleged public corruption in southeastern Oklahoma took out-of-state trips with Auditor & Inspector Jeff McMahan and embattled abstract company owner Steve Phipps.

Taking a trip to New Orleans in 2003 with McMahan and Phipps and their wives, the newspaper's Tony Thornton and Nolan Clay reported, was Karla Hall, chairman and executive director of Rural Development Foundation; the FBI alleges that state money was directed to RDF to benefit Phipps and his business partner, former Senator Gene Stipe.

Taking a trip to Biloxi, Mississippi were Roy Hatridge and Suzie Carper of National Pet Products, the McAlester dog food company that is part of the federal investigation.

Some of those involved in the Phipps-Stipes enterprises have been revealed as straw donors to multiple political campaigns, including McMahan's.

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Oklahoman Finds More Straw Donors To McMahan, Henry, Mass; McMahan Cites Donor Forms

The Oklahoman reports today it has identified more straw donors to the campaigns of Auditor & Inspector Jeff McMahan, Governor Brad Henry and former legislator Mike Mass.

Investigative reporters Nolan Clay and Tony Thornton report that about a dozen donors to the McMahan and Henry campaigns contributed about the same amounts they were paid by companies tied to abstract company owner Steve Phipps and former Senator Gene Stipe. The companies, Phipps, Stipe and others are now the focus of a federal investigation.

Clay and Thornton report they were able to identify the previously-unnamed donors by matching the names on "internal financial records" they obtained to campaign donor lists.

McMahan said his campaign obtained "contributor statements from everyone who contributed" and he thus assumed the donations to his campaign were legal.

Read more at www.newsok.com or by obtaining a copy of Sunday's edition of The Oklahoman.

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