Washington ? Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft’s 1998 leadership PAC, Spirit of America, and his Senate re-election campaign committee, Ashcroft 2000, raised more than $100,000 last year to pay a fine and legal costs for violating campaign finance laws, according to Federal Election Commission records and Garrett Lott, treasurer of both committees.

The funds raised last year included individual contributions and income the leadership PAC derived from renting out a political mailing list, according to Lott and FEC records.

The use of the mailing list rental income in the 2000 re-election campaign first got Ashcroft and his committees in trouble with the FEC three years ago. Last December, the two Ashcroft committees agreed to pay a $37,000 fine levied by the FEC, based on at least four violations of federal campaign laws.

The Spirit of America PAC in 1999 and 2000 earned $165,000 from renting its mailing list to outside groups and transferred $112,000 of that money to the Ashcroft 2000 campaign committee. Election laws, the FEC ruled, permitted the Ashcroft PAC to donate only $5,000 for the primary and $5,000 for the general election to his Senate campaign committee, which it already had done.

During the two-year FEC inquiry, Ashcroft committee lawyers described the then-senator as owner of the PAC mailing list, which would have exempted the fund transfers from any limitations. However, the FEC last year rejected that assertion because Ashcroft did not disclose his ownership or the rental income in his 1998 and 1999 Senate financial disclosures. He has also not listed the mailing list as an asset in his required filings as attorney general.

Ashcroft, who lost his re-election campaign before being tapped by President Bush as attorney general, has avoided any direct involvement with his fund-raising committees’ legal problems, even though he was the founder and major figure in both of them. To make their case, committee lawyers instead used documents he signed, including one that they said established his ownership of the mailing list, but the attorney general was never interviewed during the FEC inquiry.

Mark Corallo, Ashcroft’s spokesman at the Justice Department, said recently that the attorney general’s disclosure statement “is complete.” To the question of who owns the mailing list, Corallo said: “I can’t comment. I don’t know. That is prior history. … Talk to campaign people.”

Ashcroft’s role and the ongoing operation of his two committees continue to be the focus of legal concern. Late last week, the Massachusetts-based National Voting Rights Institute (NVRI), which filed the original FEC complaint against Ashcroft and his committees, urged Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine to investigate “potential civil and criminal violations of federal law” by the two committees and Ashcroft while he has been attorney general.

The FEC dealt only with civil violations of the election laws; only Justice can investigate possible criminal violations of those laws.