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If you’ve read the first eight parts of our series on Diane Harkey, you are probably wondering how a good conservative could be surrounded by so much drama and legal issues. This is why when I started calling people and digging up articles, I was fascinated in a bad way by what I was finding. I always knew Harkey completely differently than what I have been learning.
This is the $5,600,000 house Dan and Diane Harkey live in
I am also convinced that the DCCC did not do a thorough job of research on her in 2018. The reason had to be because they knew Levin was going to win easily. I am not sure if the DCCC or other political opponents uncovered everything I have found. The volume of information is staggering and Diane Harkey is not who she says she is. I can prove and defend that statement definitively based on what I have learned. In today’s blog, I am going to lay out the leading edge of the evidence that substantiates that statement. I don’t make that statement lightly as I know Harkey will use the legal system to settle a score.
It is my clear opinion that Diane Harkey has lied about her personal situation many times. One such occasion is related to the humiliating wage garnishment that punctuated her exit from the Assembly in to the corrupt Board of Equalization.
On August 5th 2014, Diane Harkey sent a letter to then California Controller John Chiang.
In it she made a couple of stunning requests and equally as stunning claims.
The claim: She is legally separated and thus should not be garnished. Based on my research, this claim was misleading at best and likely was an outright lie. I found no evidence of legal separation despite extensive research.
The Second Claim: Former Husband. Dan and Diane Harkey were still married at the time she wrote the letter. I will follow up in a bit with even more evidence of how profound this lie was and is.
The request: She asked for her legislative pay to stop alltogether. I can only describe this as a completely callous disregard for the victims and a desire to win at all costs. I believe this mentality was also at work in the bungled lawsuit against Mark Wyland.
We learned that indeed Diane Harkey’s wages were garnished for three months. On 8-12-2014, the OC Register reported the humiliating response to Harkey’s request to escape the consequences:
Diane Harkey, who is running for the state tax board, wrote Chiang on Aug. 5, asking him to suspend her state salary in order to avoid the garnishment.
Chiang’s office responded Monday, saying it could suspend pay to her, but was legally required to surrender the court-ordered garnishment of 25 percent of what remains of her $95,000 annual pay. She leaves office at the end of the year because of term limits.
Questions have arisen over the couple’s marital status. Timothy Aires, attorney for the investors seeking payment of the judgment against Dan Harkey for breach of fiduciary responsibility, said he could find no record of a legal separation in the Orange County or Sacramento courts.
Harkey’s office referred media calls to her campaign consultant, Tim Clark.
Clark said the couple had been separated “for some time” but didn’t know how long, and declined comment on Aires’ inability to find documentation of the separation. He said Dan Harkey moved out of the couple’s Dana Point oceanview home and Diane Harkey remained.
Well it looks like Tim Clark lied again, similar to how he is lying (and has lied) in 2021 to protect John Moorlach in the midst of the rape cover-up scandal. Did Tim Clark simply repeat the lie from Diane Harkey about the separation and Dan’s living situation or did Clark know the truth when he lied?
Lloyd Charton, who lives two doors away from the Harkey home in the gated, exclusive community, is among investors owed money from Harkey and his bankrupt investment company. He said he’s seen Dan Harkey at least once in recent weeks.
“I wouldn’t say that I see him often, but I saw him a couple weeks ago when he had his usual Friday luxury car wash, with some of his luxury cars lined up in front of their home for the washer,” Charton said, adding that a Bentley, a Ferrari and a Porsche were among Dan Harkey’s vehicles.
Diane Harkey, 63, previously filed for divorce from Dan Harkey in 1998, with the filing dismissed in 2008.
The assemblywoman is favored to win the Board of Equalization’s 4th District in November. Her campaign spent $622,000 in the six-person primary and she finished first. She’ll face off against Democrat Nader Shahatit, an auditor with the tax board. Shahatit said he plans minimal fundraising and has declined to criticize Harkey, saying he is running a positive campaign.
Aires said the investors he represents will pursue Harkey’s tax board wages if she wins in November. Beside the wage garnishment, investors have asked the courts to give them $100,000 Diane Harkey loaned her campaign and an estimated $25,000 worth of horses owned by the couple.
There’s that Bentley again. I will lay odds if I was to speak to Lloyd Charlton, that he’d tell me he has seen a lot of Dan Harkey over the last several years at their $5,600,000 home.
As you can see from this Orange County Register story, the drama followed Diane Harkey in to the Board of Equalization. Except, we will learn that the Board of Equalization was a disaster in and of itself and Diane Harkey enjoyed the perks of office while the BOE spiraled out of control. And, she played the victim when challenged on it.
The San Diego Union Tribune actually endorsed Shirley Horton for the Board of Equalization over Diane Harkey and their words were damming:
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/editorials/sdut-shirley-horton-for-board-of-equalization-2014may27-story.html
Shirley Horton for Board of Equalization
By U-T SAN DIEGO EDITORIAL BOARD
MAY 27, 2014 5 PM
The Board of Equalization is an important if obscure agency that collects state sales and use taxes and dozens of other taxes and fees. It also referees disputes between taxpayers and governments.
It’s crucial that this agency has an appropriate balance between revenue-hungry bureaucrats and residents who deserve fair treatment. Which brings us to the decision that voters in San Diego County, Imperial County, Orange County and much of the Inland Empire have on June 3: They will be asked to choose among six candidates to represent the region on the BOE’s five-member governing board.
Only two of the candidates, both Republicans, are running serious campaigns. They both emphasize their determination to be a taxpayer advocate on a board otherwise dominated by government interests.
But only one has the requisite character to deserve election. That candidate is Shirley Horton, the former Assembly member and Chula Vista mayor. Horton has been a consistent supporter of lean, smart, business-friendly government and championed legislation to get information about sexual predators online.
Horton’s support for AB 32, the state’s deeply problematic 2006 law forcing a shift to cleaner but costlier forms of energy, was disappointing. But it would take acres of newsprint to list what’s been disappointing about the other serious Board of Equalization candidate, Assemblywoman Diane Harkey of Dana Point.
It was in 2009 that fraud allegations first emerged against Point Center Financial, a real-estate firm led by her husband, Dan Harkey. Though she has been listed as both a public officer and an employee of the company, she says she had nothing to do with the actions that led to three fraud judgments against Dan Harkey and Point Central Financial awarding $12.5 million in damages to about 80 investors.
Other facts are crucial and damning. As The Orange County Register reported in 2009, Diane Harkey spent $135,000 to launch her political career in 2004 with a successful bid for the Dana Point City Council. She spent $2 million more on a failed state Senate bid in 2006, a successful Assembly run in 2008, and on other political campaigns. Given that her campaign disclosure forms showed limited personal assets at the time, it is obvious that people would wonder if her career in politics is based on a family fortune built at least partly through fraud.
Yet for five years, Harkey has seethed that this question is “sexist” and amounts to “slander”; she even briefly sued state Sen. Mark Wyland, R-Solana Beach, for his related criticism. Harkey has done so even though she has changed details on her original story — actions that invite further media scrutiny. She has done so even as dozens of other political figures faced similar tough questions about their families’ finances.
Both Harkey’s refusal to answer basic questions about her family scandal and her decision to depict herself as a victim are unconscionable. She is unsuitable for public service.
A final note: The decision to endorse Horton was made by the newspaper’s owners in consultation with some members of the Editorial Board. Editorial and Opinion Editor Bill Osborne, who has a conflict of interest, didn’t participate in this process or in the writing or editing of this editorial.
The SDUT missed a detail, the suit lasted until late 2015 when the appeals court let Harkey out of having to pay Mark Wyland’s legal bills, then she dropped the suit.
Diane Harkey walked in to the Board of Equalization with a 747 full of baggage, and what happened at the BOE only added to it. But, she is a victim and none of the scandals were her fault according to her. Oh and she had to fight two separate garnishments – one in the assembly and another attempted while in the BOE. Unreal.
