Retired lawyer Bernard Harrell has more questions about compensation for legal services provided to Roy Cooper’s campaign, even after a lawyer for the attorney general’s re-election committee seemingly explained how they were paid for.

Harrell had asked the State Board of Elections on Sept. 16 to investigate Cooper’s political campaign for not reporting in-kind contributions from nine lawyers and their law firms. Two days later John Wallace, a lawyer representing the campaign, said Cooper was in compliance with election laws.

“The legal costs in this case are being paid by private insurance,” Wallace said in a statement. “The premise of [Harrell’s] letter to the Board — that lawyers are contributing services — is wrong.”

However, Wallace’s explanation only spurred more questions from Harrell, who brought them to the attention of the board in a followup letter, which he delivered Tuesday.

“Mr. Wallace’s remarks, rather than being exculpatory, raise other questions that an investigation would need to answer,” Harrell wrote.

He said that the elections board, in order to determine whether campaign laws were violated, should ask:

• Who owns the insurance policies?

• Who paid the premiums?

• Who are the named “insureds” under the policy provisions?

• Is the Cooper Committee an insured entity entitled to policy benefits?

• Are policy benefits being extended to the Cooper Committee?

“The answer to the above questions are important because, if the Campaign Committee itself is not an owner, or a named insured under the policy, any defense provided to it would not be paid by insurers,” Harrell wrote. “On the other hand, if insurers are providing policy benefits and indemnity to the Committee, they are clearly making a ‘contribution’ to the campaign. If legal services are being provided to the Committee without charge, either by the insurers or by insurance-paid attorneys, both instances might be violations of the election laws.

“It is possible that all these questions have perfectly rational and exculpatory answers. But the questions must first be asked and answered.”

In the November 2000 election the Cooper Committee ran campaign ads about the Republican candidate, Raleigh lawyer Dan Boyce, that members of Boyce’s law firm said were untrue. As a result, Boyce and three members of his firm filed a lawsuit in Wake County Superior Court against the Cooper Committee. The case, which has been litigated for four years, is at the N.C. Court of Appeals for the second time. The legal work questioned by Harrell was work done by the nine lawyers from three law firms that have defended the Cooper Committee.

In his letter last week, Harrell said that corporations or business entities such as limited liability partnerships (LLPs) cannot make contributions to political campaigns, and that the Cooper Committee failed to report any in-kind legal services from the three law firms or the nine lawyers. Harrell said that the lawyers cannot be classified as volunteers if their law firms were paying them for their hours on the case. He also said that court filing fees, printing costs, office supplies, phone calls, and travel expenses must be accounted for.

In addition, Harrell said in the letter that Cooper hired two of the law firms to represent the state while those firms or their lawyers were providing the in-kind legal services to his campaign committee.

Republican Joe Knott of Raleigh is challenging Cooper in the attorney general’s race. Harrell is the uncle of former Raleigh Mayor Tom Fetzer, now a political consultant who is managing Knott’s campaign. Both Harrell and Fetzer have denied collaboration on developing or filing the complaint against Cooper. However, Wallace was suspicious.

“This lawsuit has been going on for almost four years and it’s obvious why this issue has been raised so close to the 2004 election,” he said in his written statement.

Wallace and representatives of Cooper’s campaign did not return telephone messages seeking comment.

Don Carrington is associate publisher of Carolina Journal. Associate editor Paul Chesser also contributed to this story.