Unfinished political reform business
In mid-2011, Christopher J. Tigani pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges, including those arising out of his reimbursement of straw donors to various federal election campaigns. Recognizing that certain state law violations might also have occurred, federal investigators referred the matter to Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who promptly recused himself and appointed me as Independent Counsel to conduct an investigation.
With a team of outstanding Delaware State Police investigators, lawyers from my former law firm, and state prosecutors from the Delaware Department of Justice, we undertook a comprehensive investigation of potential violations of state law by Tigani, his company (N.K.S. Distributors), and others, beginning with the primary election of 2008. Our investigation was a robust and wide-ranging, two-year effort. Our investigators collected and analyzed thousands of documents and conducted more than 80 interviews of 63 people, devoting over 8,000 hours to the effort.