The State Auditor's Office filed a petition in Cole County Court related to an invalid subpoena issued by the Secretary of State's Office and today (Oct. 7) released the following statement:  

Yesterday, Secretary Ashcroft issued an invalid subpoena under his signature.

The Secretary of State's Office sent a Sunshine Law request to the State Auditor's Office last week.  Rather than wait for the response that we indicated would be forthcoming, the Secretary of State has decided to inject partisan politics into his request a few weeks before an election. Not only does the Secretary lack the legal authority to issue such a subpoena, the demand was riddled with errors, including misspelling the Auditor's name and asking for documents with a response deadline more than six weeks in the past.

The State Auditor's Office will continue to comply with the law and provide this information as we previously indicated.

This office has already disclosed 138,000 pages of documents to the Secretary of State's Office in relation to this matter.