Speaker Tim Jones has a side business, Missouri Freedom Alliance, LLC. What does it do? He isn't giving straight answers.
Here's what the Kansas City Star reported this weekend:
When first asked about the limited liability corporation — which he founded his first year in the legislature — the state’s most powerful lawmaker said in two separate phone conversations that he made a small amount of money over the years doing legal consulting on the legislative process.
“I provide basic, rudimentary, Legislature 101 advice,” Jones said. “I’m not representing anyone. I’m not advocating for anything. I generally don’t even know who these people” — referring to who his lawyer clients might represent — “are or what their issue is. And it’s basic ‘how a bill becomes a law’ type stuff.”
Later, Jones said he misspoke and that Missouri Freedom Alliance had nothing to do with legislative issues. Rather, he said, the work was limited to consulting on private legal matters that the law firm he works for wasn’t able to handle.
Over the last three years, he said, there were only two instances where he received payment. He says he earned a “few hundred dollars” in 2010, and nothing from the company this year.
Weird, right?
It gets weirder. Here's how the Speaker explained his alleged misstatement in an interview with conservative KCMO radio personality Greg Knapp:
"I had been speaking with someone who does do that type of work and it was the thing on my mind and I blurted it out...I was caught off guard, I blurted out a wrong answer."