A joint legislative committee recently released a report about how state agencies handled the FRM Ponzi scheme.

Immediately, candidates for U.S. Senate -- both Republican and Democrat -- released statements critical Kelly Ayotte's role in the matter when she was New Hampshire's attorney general.

Ayotte resigned as AG to run as a Republican for the U.S. Senate seat of retiring Republican Judd Gregg.

But reading the report -- then reading the critical statements -- you begin to wonder who was reading what.

The report from a joint legislative committee that held hearings on the matter shows complaints about Financial Resources Mortgage of Meredith didn't go very high in the food chain in the attorney general's office.

The highest-ranking member of the attorney general's Office to know of the complaints was the head of the criminal bureau, according to the report, and those complaints were referred to the banking commission.
The report faults Ayotte for only one thing -- not implementing effective internal procedures for making sure serious matters were brought to her attention.

But to read the comments from Ayotte's opponents -- Democrat Paul Hodes and Republicans Bill Binnie and Jim Bender -- you'd think that Ayotte had direct knowledge of the complaints and simply ignored them.

Are Kelly Ayotte's politics ripe for criticism? You bet. But the criticism should be based on something direct, not something tangential.