Kent Sorenson

In July 2012, Barb Heki, a Johnston, Iowa, woman who once worked for Bachmann, began legal proceedings against the former Bachmann campaign and her senior campaign aides, claiming Sorenson took an email list from her private computer to promote Bachmann's candidacy among Christian homeschooling advocates before the Iowa caucuses, and that she was unjustly blamed for its use. (Court papers said she had told Sorenson that she would not provide the list to the campaign.) On September 11, Heki filed a police report stating that a private email list was stolen from her office at Bachmann's Iowa campaign office in Urbandale, Iowa, sometime between November 1 and November 10, 2011. The police report lists the suspect as a 40-year-old man from Milo who is a state senator, but does not give the legislator's name. Sorenson, 40 at the time of the incident, was the only state senator from Milo.[10] The lawsuit also claims that Sorenson and Bachmann defamed Heki. Sorenson's lawyer said his client did not "make any defamatory or disparaging comments against Barb Heki. We'll present evidence that Senator Sorenson never said anything that could be construed as defamatory."[11]

In August 2013, conservative activist Dennis Fusaro claimed[12] that Sorenson backed Ron Paul in the 2012 presidential campaign after demanding money from the Paul campaign. State senate rules prohibit campaigns from paying senators directly or indirectly. The Iowa Senate Ethics Committee assigned a state special investigator, who reported "probable cause" that Sorenson had broken Senate rules by accepting money for presidential campaign work. The 566-page report stated that Sorenson had received a $25,000 check from a top official of Paul's presidential campaign, as well as from a political action committee connected to the Bachmann campaign.[13][14][15][16] Sorenson switched from Bachmann's campaign to Paul's in the closing days of the GOP caucuses. Bachmann claimed at the time that he defected to her competitor's team because they were paying him to do so. Sorenson had long denied being paid by any of the presidential campaigns. The investigator's report said Sorenson's denials may have violated state law, a class D felony for felonious misconduct by a public official.

The U.S. Justice Department has since subpoenaed records in connection with possible illegal campaign coordination between Bachmann's campaign and another PAC, but is at present unclear which federal law(s) the Department believes may have been broken. The New York Times has reported on a grand jury investigation that began after Heki filed her complaints with the Federal Election Commission. The Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant in mid-November 2013 at Sorenson's home, confiscating computers and other materials relating to communications. The Des Moines Register reported that the search was related to investigations of Sorenson's actions in the Bachmann and Paul campaigns.[17]

Sorenson resigned from the Iowa Senate on October 2, 2013, after a special investigator appointed by the Iowa Supreme Court, Mark Weinhardt, found he likely violated ethics rules by taking money from political entities connected to Bachmann and Paul, but denied he had done so.[18][19] According to the report, Sorenson received a $25,000 check and a $73,000 electronic banking transfer from the Paul campaign. On October 3, 2013, Iowa Attorney General's Office spokesman Geoff Greenwood said Sorenson could be charged with a crime and prosecuted. Polk County Attorney John P. Sarcone said his office would review the report and consider filing charges if the facts warranted it.

Sorenson failed a condition of pre-sentencing probation on September 30, 2014, as a drug test came back positive for marijuana.[28] The probation officer assigned to him asked that no action be taken in response to the drug test.

At a February 19, 2015, hearing before U.S. District Judge Robert W. Pratt, both sides sought a delay in sentencing because of a "larger investigation" of campaign misconduct.[1] On January 17, 2017, Judge Robert Pratt sentenced Sorenson to 15 months in prison and allowed him to turn himself in at a later date to begin his sentence. As Sorenson and his supporters left the courthouse after the sentencing, one of his daughters, Makala Sorenson-Barnes, attacked a photographer covering the event for WHO TV and screamed profanities as Sorenson, and another daughter left the courthouse and hurriedly walked to a waiting vehicle without comment.[29]