Rep. Enid Waldholtz, R-Utah, has quit answering questions about her chaotic finances. But she will find that won't make them go away. It will only make them fester.
Amid mounting evidence of possible check kiting, misleading disclosure statements and campaign law violations, Waldholtz this week hired a lawyer to sort through such problems and help fix them - and said she will have no comment until he is finished.But her silence came during an avalanche of daily new disclosures by newspapers and TV stations swarming on the story. That meant stories ran without Waldholtz's point of view.
Waldholtz said she simply doesn't want to say anything that may be in error. But unanswered allegations tend to look more true over time and will be repeated until she addresses them.
And Waldholtz has dozens of big questions to answer. Here are some of the biggest to watch as the story develops.
1. Where did Waldholtz get her money? That seems to be the root question from which all other allegations sprout.
Waldholtz reported giving $1.8 million to her campaign last year but filed a financial disclosure statement that suggested she may not have had enough assets to legally do that (she may give no more than half the joint assets of her husband and herself, and she had to have enough liquidity left on which to live).
She said she simply checked a wrong box on the form - but has yet to officially file an amendment she promised months ago.
She showed the Deseret News a financial account statement she said proved she had millions in assets. But it lacked a company name on it, an address, a phone number, an account number and other normally expected data. She has yet to respond to questions about those anomalies.
Also, she said that multimillion-dollar account was held by a company called "TWC Ready Assets." The Deseret News cannot locate any such company or find any money management firm that offers such an account. Waldholtz has not answered questions about where it is located, or who a contact may be.
Even if Waldholtz has such funds, she has never directly said from where the money came - which could also make a difference in whether the donations were legal.
They might have come from her 1993 marriage to Joe Waldholtz, which would mean the donations she made were legal. But rumors say much of it may have come as gifts from relatives, which she then funneled into the campaign - which would likely be considered a violation of donation limits by family members.
When asked about those rumors (before Waldholtz quit talking), she didn't address them directly. She merely said she has always obeyed campaign laws.
2. How can a couple of millionaires constantly bounce checks and get sued for non-payment of bills? The Waldholtzes blame it on stolen checks, stolen credit cards, bills and checks that get lost in the mail and on "disruptions" caused by entanglements between the finances of Joe Waldholtz and his extended family.
The amount of bad luck of thievery may be an amazing coincidence, or their finances may be sloppy, or they have extravagant tastes (like one bounced $60,000 check for jewelry) or they may not be as well off as disclosure forms suggest.
Waldholtz has also never explained exactly how her husband's extended family has entangled his money or caused problems. She has promised to do so later.
3. How much money did Waldholtz's campaign have, and when did it have it? At the same time Waldholtz's campaign reported hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, former aides and vendors say it bounced checks in its only reported bank account.
Some say Joe Waldholtz, the campaign treasurer, even made up numbers or guessed at them for campaign disclosure forms.
A quick way to kill such rumors would be for Enid Waldholtz to provide statements from her campaign accounts at First Security Bank to show they match FEC disclosures. She declined to do so for now but said she will release that information after the review by her lawyer is complete.
She faces a raft of other questions on other specifics of problems that have arisen. Meanwhile, the FBI is interviewing current and former staff members seeking answers too.
The questions won't go away until she fully addresses them, and politically sooner is much better than later.
Otherwise, the festering questions could so spoil her political future to the point that the only big question would eventually become exactly when she will resign or announce she will not seek re-election.