(The Center Square) – Washington Attorney General’s Office spokesman told reporters there was “no story” in an exclusive by The Center Square about AGO and legislative communications over the millionaire’s tax, dismissing the investigation as “misinformation” and “nonsense,” new internal emails show.
But watchdogs say the records, which were released to The Center Square under the state open records laws despite some being marked attorney-client privilege, have exposed important information of the behind-the-scenes work to legalize a state progressive income tax. That’s despite the state Supreme Court repeatedly ruling a tax was unconstitutional and residents voting on ballot issues to stop prior income taxes since the 1930s.
In April, The Center Square published a story about internal emails showing the Washington AGO actively helped legislators write the state’s new capital gains income tax to pave the way for a progressive income tax. The documents describe AGO lawyers advising on how to challenge nearly 100 years of Supreme Court rulings that define income as property and bar a progressive income tax, even as the office publicly framed its role as routine legal counsel.
Hours after the April 20 story published, Washington State Standard reporter Jerry Cornfield emailed AGO Deputy Communications Director Mike Faulk requesting the same records obtained by The Center Square. While Faulk said he would check to see if the records could be released, he added that “the story is one of their (The Center Square) dumbest yet,” according to new emails The Center Square obtained through a public records request.
Citizen Action Defense Fund Executive Director Jackson Maynard, who is suing to stop the tax, mocked Faulk’s downplaying The Center Square story.
“The AG’s approach here reminds me of the scene from Monty Python (and The Holy Grail),” he said. “He’s (the Black Knight) on the ground and keeps getting stabbed and he says ‘it’s just a flesh wound.’ They’re trying to pretend it’s not a big deal.”
Taxpayers pay Faulk $131,000 a year to provide the public information about the office.
The Center Square reached out to Faulk for an interview about his comments on why the records were not worthy of a story. Instead, Faulk sent a statement in an email that “nothing in those documents shows anything inappropriate happened in our discussions with the Legislature.”
The AGO has never reached out to The Center Square requesting a correction to the April 20 story or other related stories published since then.
Despite Faulk’s campaign to downplay the revelations in the records, nearly all the media outlets in Washington and even some national ones, like the Wall Street Journal editorial page, cited The Center Square’s investigation.
‘Inanity is spreading’
When KIRO Newsradio also reached out that same day for comment, Faulk wrote an internal email to top AGO leadership that “The Center Square inanity is spreading.
“I’m surprised this piece by a partisan outlet with its evident lack of understanding of state government is worth a follow up,” he wrote the radio station.
The statement to KIRO, edited personally by Attorney General Nick Brown, said that “lawyers routinely help clients who want to advocate for overturning precedent, which is something AG offices around the country get asked to do. Lawmakers request legal advice and we are required to provide it.”
When FOX 13 reporter Alejandra Guzman reached out to Faulk on April 21 requesting comment on The Center Square’s story, Faulk wrote that he could provide one, but “it’s just that there is no story here.”
“The Center Square just doesn’t understand state government and is highly motivated to stoke misinfo about people who aren’t aligned with them politically,” he wrote.
In a prior email to Guzman, Faulk wrote “The Center Square’s misleading narrative is nonsense.”
The Center Square Publisher Chris Krug said Faulk was just trying to downplay a big story based on records the AGO released.
“Mr. Faulk has called our reporting ‘misinformation’ and ‘nonsense’ to newsroom after newsroom,” Krug wrote in a statement. “In none of those emails (to media outlets) did he name a single thing we got wrong – because he can’t. The facts are confirmed by the other journalists that he emailed. He’s trying to end the reporting without answering what it raised: who received unredacted records, how attorney-client privilege was handled, and his office’s role in shaping this bill. He can’t have it both ways.”
‘Biggest political story’
Maynard said that the behind-the-scenes correspondence that The Center Square obtained “was the biggest political story” in decades in the state.
“It’s not Watergate, but it is I think important to understand the legal advice that the legislature got and whether or not they were providing political remedies rather than focusing on the legal issues at hand,” he added. “There simply is not a bigger political issue or story in the state of Washington than ‘Did the legislature act constitutionally in passing this bill (income tax) and did the attorney general properly advise them of the risks?’ The way they framed it was this is necessary to be able to feed hungry kids who need lunches and because we need to be able to meet our budget obligations for the state. It’s pretty clear from the emails that that was all just a ploy.”
CADF is the plaintiff in a lawsuit against the income tax; the legal team includes former state attorney general Rob McKenna and former state Supreme Court justice Phil Talmadge, both of whom have criticized the AGO’s communications quoted in The Center Square’s story.
Joel Ard, an attorney who represented Let’s Go Washington in its lawsuit seeking to overturn the income tax’s necessity clause preventing a referendum, agreed with Maynard. The necessity clause was originally not in the bill but was added after Solicitor General Noah Purcell advised that not having one would allow a referendum.
The Center Square’s reporting was later the basis for a supplemental brief submitted by Ard to the state Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled against LGW. LGW has since filed an initiative to repeal the income tax and has garnered enough signatures to put it on the ballot. An initiative differs from a referendum is that an initiative requires more signatures, and the initiative title is written by the AGO.
Ard told The Center Square “it is absolutely newsworthy” to know the AGO was advising lawmakers on how to craft a bill for the purpose of legalizing a progressive income tax.
“Is that advice normal?” he said. “Is that seriously the kind of advice the Attorney General gives people: Here’s how to pull this trick off?”
‘Unburdened by curiosity, truth’
When KIRO Newsradio later reached out to Faulk on April 22 in response to McKenna’s public statements, Faulk maintained that The Center Square story was “ridiculous” and written by “some political actors at right-wing blogs.
“The Center Square is what journalism looks like when unburdened by curiosity, truth, integrity or professionalism,” he wrote.
Faulk also wrote in an email to Cornfield that The Center Square “still don’t understand the bill isn’t subject to referenda regardless of an emergency clause,” but former state Supreme Court clerk and deputy solicitor general Karl Smith speculated that the court may rule in favor of a referendum to avoid taking up the constitutional issue of whether income is property, implying there was a potential legal argument for a referendum regardless of an emergency clause.
In his statement to The Center Square, Faulk wrote that state legislators “are our client by statute, a basic fact of government somehow elusive to The Center Square.”
The Center Square noted in an April 21 podcast discussing the April 20 story that the state Legislature is the client of the AGO. After The Center Square appealed public records redaction by the AGO earlier this year, Public Records Counsel Jennifer Steele wrote in a March 17 letter that “it is not uncommon for agencies to employ attorneys, but those agencies still need legal counsel. Thus, the AGO has an attorney-client relationship with the Legislature.”
Faulk also said in his statement to The Center Square that the April 20’s story headline “asserts, without evidence or attribution, that this was part of a bigger plot to put an income tax on everyone in Washington.”
The headline reads “EXCLUSIVE: Records reveal WA millionaire’s tax is meant to legalize progressive income tax,” which was based on an email by Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, in which he sent a draft of the income tax bill to AGO officials, writing “I welcome your thoughts and comments about what will give us the best shot to have Culliton overruled.”
Culliton is the first of many Supreme Court decisions declaring income to be property and therefore unconstitutional in the state.
Voters in Washington have repeatedly rejected proposals for an income tax since the 1930s but the legislative majority, nevertheless, passed the bill this session. The bill institutes an income tax in the state for the first time but exempts the first $1 million in income. Critics have said it will be easy for the legislature to lower that exemption in future years. In 2024, the Legislature approved Initiative 2111, which prohibits the state and local governments from imposing any personal income tax, though Pedersen referred to that vote as a “pie-crust promise” that could easily be broken.
Krug’s dismissed Faulk’s comments about The Center Square’s coverage, saying the news organization will continue to dig into the story.
“We’ll keep reporting,” the statement said. “The records aren’t going anywhere.”