Jason Jerue, the mysterious former employee of disgraced Democrat State Auditor Troy Kelley, finally surfaced in court yesterday. Jerue agreed to testify in the trial against his former boss Kelley (who faces 17 indictments of criminal activity, the most serious of which carries a 20-year prison sentence) after the prosecution granted him immunity.
Jerue served as the operations manager for Kelley’s former real estate services firm, the Post Closing Department – the company at the center of the federal fraud investigation. After Kelley was elected in 2012, he hired Jerue to work in the state auditor’s office on a part-time basis from California.
According to KPLU, Jerue testified that Kelley called him “sounding stressed” in August 2006. Kelley “ordered him to issue a round of refunds to escrow company clients.” Jerue said that Kelley did not give him a reason for the refunds but said he “should write as many refunds as he had company checks on hand.” The Seattle Times reports:
“When homeowners began filing class-action lawsuits against the title companies because they hadn’t received refunds, Kelley shut down his business, telling JeRue to ‘get rid of’ boxes of files: ‘He just said, ‘Dump ’em.’ So I dumped ’em.’”
Jerue’s testimony fits with the prosecution’s argument Kelley pocketed millions of dollars in homeowner fees that should have been refunded via his former real estate services firm.
Jerue also admitted that he doctored documents to get a client of the firm “to leave us alone, basically.” The Seattle Times reports:
“JeRue described how a ‘pretty intense’ employee of one title company, Old Republic Title, repeatedly asked about how Kelley was handling the fees.
“So at Kelley’s behest, JeRue ‘zeroed out’ the spreadsheets, he said: He took a column showing money due to the borrower, and he entered the same amount in a column for other expenses, suggesting that no money was due back to the borrowers.”
Given the weight of his testimony, it isn’t surprising that Kelley’s attorney attempted to discredit Jerue as a witness. Meanwhile, Democrat Kelley continues to serve as our state’s auditor.
And his fellow Democrats just look the other way, hoping no one notices.
