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Sept. 17, 2024 |  By: Jason Hancock - Missouri Independent

Dean Plocher’s PAC paid $75K to lawyers defending him over whistleblower allegations

dean plocher at a hearing

By Jason Hancock - Missouri Independent

A political action committee created to support outgoing Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher’s political career paid attorneys defending him against allegations of misconduct almost $75,000 in late August. 

According to campaign disclosure forms filed earlier this month, a PAC called Missouri United paid David Steelman and his law firm $21,000 on Aug. 23. The PAC paid Lowell Pearson’s law firm $52,000 on Aug. 28.

Missouri United is not required to file another disclosure report detailing its spending until Oct. 15. 

Steelman and Pearson defended Plocher while he was under investigation by the Missouri House Ethics Committee earlier this year. Pearson is Plocher’s attorney in a whistleblower lawsuit filed against him, his chief of staff Rod Jetton and the Missouri House. 

A Cole County judge on Tuesday set Oct. 23 for a hearing in that lawsuit, which accuses Plocher and Jetton of retaliating against the chief clerk of the House after she raised concerns about alleged mistreatment of women and misuse of state funds.

Plocher was set to run for lieutenant governor this year until shortly before the candidate filing deadline, when he switched and ran for secretary of state instead. 

He ended up finishing fourth in the Republican primary. 

After his loss, Plocher’s candidate committee — Plocher for Missouri — spent the remainder of the $295,000 it had left on hand paying his campaign advisers and settling debt from the campaign. On Sept. 5, the committee was permanently shut down. 

Missouri United, however, remains active and had $56,000 cash on hand as of Sept. 1. 

Plocher’s troubles became public late last year when he was accused of engaging in “unethical and perhaps unlawful conduct” as part of his months-long push to get the House to award an $800,000 contract to a private company to manage constituent information.

A month later, The Independent reported Plocher had on numerous occasions over the last five years illegally sought taxpayer reimbursement from the legislature for airfare, hotels and other travel costs already paid for by his campaign.

A complaint against Plocher was eventually filed with the Missouri House Ethics Committee, kicking off a four-month investigation that ended with no formal reprimand. However, the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who led the inquiry said Plocher obstructed the committee’s work through pressure on potential witnesses and refusing to issue subpoenas.

In May, a lawsuit was filed in Cole County by Dana Miller, the chief clerk of the House. She claims in the litigation that problems with Plocher began before he was speaker, when she confronted him in May 2022 over several complaints about his treatment of female Republican lawmakers, including a woman who said she considered filing an ethics complaint against him.

When she raised those concerns with Plocher, Miller said he responded by saying: “stupid Republican women…they are an invasive species.”

Tensions escalated, Miller said, during Plocher’s efforts to replace the House’s constituent management contract in 2023. When Miller pushed back, she said another lawmaker working with Plocher told her the speaker had repeatedly threatened to fire her.

Miller alleges Plocher pushed to privatize constituent management because it would mean large donations for his statewide campaign and access to communications to the House for campaign use.

In retaliation for her resistance Hernandez wrote, Plocher threatened MIller that he “would take it to a vote” to remove her as chief clerk,  “a warning of possible dismissal.”

Plocher has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and sought to get himself dismissed from the case, arguing that any allegations of wrongdoing amount to “little more than internal political disputes.”

He also argued Miller was not a whistleblower and that any alleged threats against her job were relayed to her by a third party and are therefore hearsay. And he cited a provision in Missouri’s constitution saying members of the General Assembly “shall not be questioned for any speech or debate in either House.”