NRCC and Freedom's Watch accused of illegally coordinating campaign activities

House Democrats will file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday charging that the National Republican Congressional Committee and the conservative organization Freedom’s Watch are illegally coordinating campaign activities.

In a draft of its complaint, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee points to a script Freedom’s Watch submitted to Louisiana TV stations on Tuesday for an attack ad bashing Democratic House candidate Don Cazayoux.

The Democrats say the “metadata” in the Microsoft Word document contains the letters “NRCC” in the title field and shows that the document was last modified by “cforti” — apparently a reference to Carl Forti, a former NRCC official who was recently named as executive vice president for issue advocacy at Freedom’s Watch.

“It is impossible to know from the available facts the exact nature of the relationship between the NRCC and the Freedom’s Watch script,” the DCCC says in its draft complaint. “However, any number of scenarios are consistent with the presence of ‘NRCC’ in the metadata of the script. The NRCC may have created the script and sent it to Freedom’s Watch. Freedom’s Watch may have created the script using a file or computer provided by the NRCC. In any event, the metadata tend to show that the NRCC was involved in some way in preparing the ad.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080416/pl_politico/9645