Knudsen calls Montana’s campaign laws ‘silly’

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen appears to have doubled down on his comments from a meeting in Dillon last month in which he told an audience that he had recruited a fellow Republican to run against him for attorney general so that he could raise more money.

Those comments triggered a still ongoing investigation with the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices for violating state campaign and election laws, which Knudsen also described during that Dillon meeting as “ridiculous.”

In a radio interview with KGEZ in Kalispell, Knudsen said that he wasn’t trying to hide anything and meant to disclose his efforts to recruit an opponent as a demonstration of the state’s “quite silly” laws. Furthermore, he said he told the audience gathered to hear conservative candidates in Dillon about recruiting Daniels County Attorney Logan Olson so that he could be transparent.