Hawthorn Group:

Statement of Michael Coe, Chief Operating Officer of The Hawthorn Group, regarding falsified constituent letters sent to congressional offices by Bonner and Associates.

“Since 2000, The Hawthorn Group has had the privilege of working with the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) on its public outreach programs.

“As part of our outreach efforts during the House debate on H.R. 2454, Hawthorn engaged Bonner & Associates to reach out to organizations to explain ACCCE’s position on the issue, and, if the organization’s position aligned with ACCCE’s, to request that they send a letter to their respective U.S. Representative.

“After completion of the project, Mr. Bonner informed Hawthorn that in addition to the legitimate letters resulting from their work, some falsified letters had been delivered to a few legislators. This violated Bonner’s own quality control and verification process that we understood was in place before we hired him. Hawthorn immediately terminated our work with Bonner and promptly advised ACCCE of the identified falsified letters and informed ACCCE that Mr. Bonner had agreed to follow up with the congressional offices and organizations to inform them and to apologize on behalf of Bonner & Associates. Only subsequently did Hawthorn learn that Bonner had failed to reach the congressional offices to properly advise them.

“The Hawthorn Group deeply regrets that Bonner & Associates caused the fabricated letters to be sent to the congressional offices and its failure to follow up appropriately when they discovered the error. We maintain the highest ethical and quality control standards for our work, and nothing like this has happened in our 17 years in business. We are taking steps to ensure that it doesn’t happen again