Wittich Corruption Trial Underway

After nearly four hours of jury selection the panel was whittled down to seven women and five men with two alternate jurors.

“The evidence will show Mr. Wittich received campaign donations worth thousands of dollars which he never reported,” Jarussi told the jury.

Jarussi said Wittich, a Bozeman attorney who routinely works on complex litigation involving state regulations and real estate, knows the importance of reading documents, keeping records and paying attention to details.

“It’s impossible to conclude he didn’t know the score, that he didn’t know what was going on,” Jarussi said.

Jarussi warned jurors that Wittich’s defense would try to “muddy the waters” and make the case seem more complicated than it is.

“It’s not easy to follow this complex web,” Jarussi said. “We suggest when you step back and look at it in the the light of the day, it will be clear there was a violation of Montana’s campaign finance laws, which govern all political campaigns in the state of Montana.”

One of Wittich’s attorneys, Lucinda Luetkemeyer, told the jury in her opening remarks that Wittich is a committed public servant who has been victimized by an overzealous government regulator.

Luetkemeyer told jurors that Wittich was “saddened” to receive a letter from Motl in January 2014 informing him he was under investigation.

“In 2010 [Wittich] volunteered to run for public office and worked hard to win the the general election by 70 percent of the vote,” Luetkemeyer said.

Luetkemeyer described Wittich as a committed family man and public servant who was shocked in 2014 to find out he was being sued by Motl.

“When Art held Mr. Motl’s letter in his hands … it was like the opening scene of a government overreach horror story,” Luetkemeyer told the jury.

“He worked hard, tried to play by the rules, and still found himself caught on the government’s cross hairs,” she said.

After opening remarks, the court went into recess. When proceedings resumed, Judge Ray Dayton informed the courtroom that one of the jurors had been dismissed due to a conflict that would not allow her to stay through all five scheduled days of the trial. One of the two alternates was promoted in her place, bringing the make-up of the jury to six men and six women.

The first witness to testify was a former National Right to Work Committee employee, Sarah Arnold, who worked in Montana in 2010.

Arnold, who said she was paid by Right to Work and worked under the direction of Christian LeFer, detailed the inner workings of a sophisticated, multi-layered campaign operation run by LeFer that involved high-end mail and printing house, advanced computer systems, valuable voter databases, walking lists, campaign websites and a letter-writing mill that churned out campaign materials on behalf of candidates — supposedly written by candidates’ friends and family members.

With Arnold on the stand, Jarussi walked jurors through documents that showed how the organization screened potential Republican candidates and then rewarded candidates who were “on board” with Right to Work’s “agenda” with campaign services. Arnold testified that vetted candidates who “did things the right way,” could see “thousands of pieces of friendly mail” coming into their district.

Arnold told jurors that the Right to Work organization worked directly with “14 to 16” Republican candidates in 2010, including Wittich. Arnold said she believed Wittich knew the specifics of the operation working on his behalf and was one of the “favorites” of LeFer, who ran the campaign.

Arnold will continue her testimony on Tuesday when the trial resumes at 9 a.m.