It's hard to keep track of all the facts, rumors and spin-jobs in this SCA story. For instance, Captain Joel Fox claims he never "filed" nominating petitions in 2004 for his boss, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, as had been previously reported. He merely collected eight signatures and handed them to someone else, who filed them, he says in a comment on a recent blog post about him.
We can't tell you whether his political work for the sheriff helped get him a plum assignment after Arpaio was re-elected for a fourth term in 2004. But it's safe to say he wouldn't have gotten the job if his boss knew he'd been collecting sigs for Dan Saban.
Fox's comment, though, contained a far more interesting revelation having to do with the criminal investigation of the SCA bank account and whether laws were broken when SCA money ended up in state Republican Party coffers. Fox finally 'fessed up that the SCA does, in fact, stand for Sheriff's Command Association. He's argued in the past that there is no association -- and he sure doesn't want anyone thinking the SCA is a political committee.
Here are his previous statements on the subject:
As reported in the March 31, 2009, Capitol Times:
Fox also disputed earlier reports that SCA stood for "Sheriff's Command Association," as a Republican Party official told Arizona Capitol Times in October.
"I don't know how they got that," he said. "It was just a random name."
Comment from Joel Fox on March 30:
And who says it is "Sheriff's Command Association"? The name on the account, and the checks, is just SCA.
Now, I am a command officer with the Sheriff's office, and I do associate with people from time to time, so I guess it's as good a name as any, but if those three letters are evidence to you of impropriety, then you really need to review what actually constitutes evidence.
It seems everyone just loves to speculate and fill in all the blanks, and then fit what few facts they have into what they already believe to be true.
Posted On: Monday, Mar. 30 2009 @ 10:27PM
And here's his comment on September 8:
Ray,
What SCA stands for really does mean nothing, but since you seem to be losing sleep over it, when I originally set up the bank account, I was thinking Sheriff Command Association, but when donations from the outside came, I didn't want to call it that anymore. So, for the first few months, I suppose it was Sheriff Command Association, but only in my mind, and after that, it was just SCA. Obviously, with the checks made out to COA, there wasn't any real discussion of a title, and the title doesn't dictate or restrict it, anyway.
I remember the context of my conversation with Chris Baker as saying it was originally the Sheriff Command Association, but I didn't call it that anymore. You may notice that the Republican Party's campaign finance reports listed it as SCA. It was never a main topic of conversation with Baker or anyone else, so I can see how there might be some misunderstandings.
Today, I'm thinking it refers more to the Stored Communications Act.
Of course, it's always possible someone kidnapped his Cox e-mail account for the night. But we doubt it. This looks more like a case of failing to keep track of all the lies.
