Fuse, the liberal activist group that’s been trying to fan the flames of the so-called ‘Buildergate’ scandal has filed an ethics complaint against Rob McKenna for his actions in the case.As I described in my column last week, McKenna’s office wrote a letter that seemed to question the validity of a lawsuit that two former state Supreme Court justices have filed against the Building Industry Association of Washington. The justices, represented by attorney Knoll Lowney, are trying to depose Dino Rossi in order to find out if he helped raise money last year for the BIAW’s pro-Rossi PAC–an act that would render the BIAW’s millions of dollars in spending illegal.McKenna’s actions “constitute a knowing and willful use of state agency facilities to assist Dino Rossi in his gubernatorial campaign for governor,” Fuse contends in a complaint to State Auditor Brian Sonntag. In its letter, the AG’s office suggested that the allegations against Rossi are subject to the 45-day rule, under which the AG gets the opportunity to investigate–and possibly take action against–alleged campaign-finance violations before private citizens are allowed to file a lawsuit of their own. (Actually, the AG gets 10 more days after that, or 55 in all.) The letter from AAG Linda Dalton, which was sent to all parties in Lowney’s suit, seemed to question whether the lawsuit filed in King County Superior Court was legitimate because those 55 days had not yet elapsed since the former justices had made their complaint. (They sent a complaint to the AG at the same time they filed suit.)Lowney was outraged by the letter and asked McKenna to retract it. Dino Rossi’s attorneys basically cut and pasted the AG’s statement into their own legal brief, which seeks to prevent Lowney from deposing their client. A King County judge is supposed to rule on that issue on Friday.Asked about the matter last week, Linda Dalton told me in an email that her letter was “not a formal Attorney General’s Opinion nor was it formal pleading to the court, nor was it requested by any of the parties involved. It was simply a letter to the parties, reminding them of the requirements in state law.” While the AG is not a direct party to the suit, Dalton noted that Lowney’s suit “is filed in the name of the state of Washington.” Only the state has the right to enforce campaign-finance laws.Lowney contends that his allegations about coordination between the BIAW and Rossi were contained, though not in such detail, in a complaint letter submitted to the AG back in July, but that the AG took no action, and therefore he can go forward now. That argument clearly seems like an attempt to write into his previous letter allegations that he didn’t actually have nailed down yet. It’s unclear whether, back in July, Lowney had yet uncovered the evidence that seems to implicate Rossi. In an interview, Lowney told me he couldn’t remember when he first came across the evidence, which consists of meeting minutes and emails.The AG’s legal analysis of the case certainly comes off as credible. Even so, it seems awfully, awfully strange that the AG’s office would have intervened in this way, rather than simply allowing Rossi’s lawyers to make their own arguments, and the King County judge to make her own decisions. It certainly deserves some serious questioning by Fuse.