For someone who’s tracked money in congressional politics for nearly 20 years, the prospect of witnessing bribery proceedings against two members of Congress within a six-month period – one Republican and one Democrat – is nothing short of breathtaking.
True, I didn’t come on the scene until after the Abscam scandal had come and gone, producing bribery convictions in 1980 for one senator and five congressman. But out-and-out bribery cases really don’t happen that often on Capitol Hill – which is why this past weekend’s revelations about New Orleans Democratic Congressman William Jefferson wound up on page one of newspapers across the country.
Continue readingTop of the Morning:
- The former White House procurement official and Jack Abramoff devotee David Safavian is set to go to trial this week. Safavian, accused of lying the officials at the General Services Administration, will be the first court room test for prosecutors in the still unfolding Washington corruption case surrounding the practices of Jack Abramoff, according to Bloomberg. Prosecutors do not plan on calling Abramoff as a witness but will instead use the email exchanges between the two men to detail Safavian's actions. The former chief of staff to Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), Neil Volz, will be called to testify against Safavian. Jury selection begins today.
- The San Diego Union Tribune reports that staffers to Duke Cunningham believed that he was a "nice guy" and that he was innocent until the day he pleaded guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes.
- Some Tennessee lawmakers are making their earmark requests public as a means of showcasing that not all earmarks are boondoggles and a waste of federal dollars, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. The lawmakers, a group that includes Reps. Lincoln Davis (D-TN), Harold Ford Jr. (D-TN), and Jim Cooper (D-TN), also hope to show that transparency is the best means to insure that earmarking is not abused.
- The Los Angeles Daily News talks to the new ranking Democrat on the House Ethics Committee Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA).
- Time Magazine reports that another aide to deposed CIA chief Porter Goss is under investigation in the continuing probe of Duke Cunningham and the actions of alleged briber and defense contractor Brent Wilkes. That aide is Brant "Nine Fingers" Bassett, who has been said to have attended the Wilkes run poker games at hospitality suites in the Watergate and Westin Hotels.
Congressman’s Office Searched, Caught on Video:
In case you didn't catch the news this weekend a number of non-descript white men entered the office of a congressman under federal investigation for a number of violations including bribery. Those men were FBI agents carrying out a search warrant by raiding Rep. William Jefferson's (D-LA) House office building - the first time a congressional office has been raided - and searching the office for over 17 hours. In information released as a part to the search warrant it has become clear that the federal investigation into Jefferson's alleged solicitation of bribes in an African telecommunications deal is solid. The Washington Post:
Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), the target of a 14-month public corruption probe, was videotaped accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from a Northern Virginia investor who was wearing an FBI wire, according to a search warrant affidavit released yesterday. A few days later, on Aug. 3, 2005, FBI agents raided Jefferson's home in Northeast Washington and found $90,000 of the cash in the freezer, in $10,000 increments wrapped in aluminum foil and stuffed inside frozen-food containers, the document said.A woman, Lori Mody, who was a part to the deals with the African nations Nigeria and Ghana also wore a wire in her meetings with the congressman:
"All these damn notes we're writing to each other as if we're talking as if the FBI is watching," he told Mody, who was wearing an FBI wire. ... In another instance, Jefferson said someone, identified in court papers only as "John Doe #1," needed money to bribe "various officials in Nigeria." "We got to motivate him real good," Jefferson allegedly told Mody. "He got a lot of folks to pay off." Later in the conversation, he says: "If he's got to pay Minister X, we don't want to know. It's not our deal. We're not paying Minister X a damn thing. That's all, you know, international fraud crap."Jefferson has yet to plead to anything and insists that he is innocent and is a victim of a trumped up investigation by too eager prosecutors. The congressman from New Orleans refuses to resign his seat if he is indicted and plans on fighting the charges. However, if what we see from these telephone conversations and video are true Jefferson will go down as one of the most blatantly corrupt congressmen in recent history. These tapes are so offensive that even if he were to fight the charges it is doubtful that the people of New Orleans, who are in need of honest and strong leadership in Congress, will send this man back to Washington come November. Continue reading
Birth of an Interest?
Here's an interesting bit from a weekend Washington Post article on the increased pace of investment in ethanol producing plants in Iowa (and elsewhere):
"Every time a plant is built," said Bill Horan, "that's 500 more ethanol supporters in a congressman's district. And they really care. It's not just Ma and Pa on the farm. It's their dentist son in Chicago who's interested in his inheritance, and his sister in San Francisco."Now why would ethanol producers need the support of members of Congress?
... suppose the price of oil declines -- if, for example, the economies in China and India slip, the global oil market grows calm and a booming ethanol supply outstrips demand. Suppose Congress supports President Bush's recent call to eliminate the tariff of 54 cents a gallon on plentiful Brazilian ethanol. Continue reading
Grounded:
According to the Associated Press, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) is no longer flying the really friendly skies:
An Ohio lawmaker whose travel is under scrutiny stopped accepting paid trips for himself and his staff shortly after questions were raised about who funded his trip to Scotland with lobbyist Jack Abramoff. After accepting 131 trips worth $234,775 in 4 1/2 years, Rep. Bob Ney and his staff haven't let a private outside group pay for their travel since June 14, 2005, according to an Associated Press review of travel disclosure forms Ney's office filed with the House clerk.Continue reading
Spooky Appropriations Seat:
Some seats in Congress are famous and carry strong traditions. There is the Daniel Webster desk and the Jefferson Davis desk. There is the New York Senate seat currently occupied by Hillary Clinton that was previously occupied by equally well-known out-of-staters with strong personalities Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Robert Kennedy. But what about seats of infamy? I believe we may have one on the House Appropriations Committee. When Randy "Duke" Cunningham resigned his seat in Congress and was subsequently sent to prison for his role in a sweeping bribery scandal he also left a seat on the Appropriations Committee, a seat from which he did a lot of his dirty work. That seat remained open until Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) resigned his leadership post after being indicted on money laundering charges. DeLay immediately took Cunningham's seat on the Appropriations Committee. DeLay later announced that he was going to resign from Congress after one of his top former aides pled guilty to charges in another Congressional scandal, the one that involved Tom DeLay's "best friend" Jack Abramoff, his former press secretary Michael Scanlon, his former chief of staff Ed Buckham, and lots of money. CongressDailyPM reports that the front-runner for this tainted seat is Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA). Who knows how the seat will corrupt Calvert? Oh wait a second. He's already involved in some dubious actions (noted previously here). From CongressDailyPM:
The Los Angeles Times reported Monday that Calvert made a significant profit off an empty four-acre tract bought last year after steering an $8 million earmark near the area to build a highway, and $1.5 million to boost commercial development. Those earmarks were included not in an appropriations bill, but in last's year's $286.4 billion highway reauthorization bill. Calvert and a business partner bought the lot for $550,000, and sold it for $985,000 a few months after the bill became law -- a 79 percent increase in value.Now that is a sweet deal he's got going for him. Imagine the kind of stuff that Calvert can earmark near his land holdings when he's on the Appropriations Committee. Maybe the seat doesn't corrupt people, it just attracts unseemly types. Or it could go the other way considering Cunningham seemed like an upstanding guy when he came to Congress. One of those chicken or the egg things I guess. Continue reading
Feds Open Investigation into Baby Jesus, Four “Wise” Men:
A couple of days ago North Carolina State Rep. Drew Saunders (D-Mecklenberg) stated his support for "an amendment to the legislative ethics bill that lowers the monetary threshold on gifts lawmakers may receive from neighbors and state employees" by saying this:
"Even baby Jesus accepted gifts and I don't believe it corrupted him."Continue reading
Afternoon News:
- I'm confused. First, Duke Cunningham is said to not be cooperating with the federal investigation into bribery by defense contractors. Now he states, through his lawyer, that he will cooperate fully with a House Ethics Committee investigation and has been cooperating all along with the federal investigation. So, what's the deal here?
- We do know that Mitchell Wade, the contractor convicted of bribing Duke Cunningham, is talking to prosecutors. The Boston Globe looks into who he might be talking about. Two lawmakers, who both received illegal campaign contributions from Wade and tried, one successfully and the other unsuccessfully, to secure federally earmarked funds for his MZM, Inc., look like ready targets for this expanding investigation. They are Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA), who successfully earmarked funds for an MZM office in his district, and Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL), who, after dining with Wade to the tune of $2,800, attempted to insert an earmark that would established an MZM site in her district.
- That loophole is so big I could fit a few hundred million dollars through it. (Wall Street Journal)
- The Torch is back! Former Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) is back in the news, and as you would expect it's bad news for the Torch. The Financial Times reports that Torricelli is now being connected to the UN oil for food scandal. Just recently I read a piece about how Torricelli was still a player and was doling out advice to Democratic Senators and consultants. That will probably stop if this report proves true. I think the guy might become even more radioactive than he used to be.
- TPM Muckraker reports on the Democrats' choice to have Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) as the top Dem on the House Intelligence Committee. "That's right: Pelosi wants to replace House Intel Committee Ranking Member Jane Harman (CA) with Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL), who "was forced to surrender his job as a federal judge after being indicted in 1981 on bribery charges," as the LA Times reports it. He beat the rap, but "was impeached in 1988 by the House for conspiracy and making false statement" in connection to the case."
- On the emergency supplemental front Mark Tapscott reports that there may be a victory at hand with the Senate agreeing to "cap spending in the emergency spending bill for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and Gulf Coast hurricane recovery to $94.5 billion."
The Data Tells The Story
Kudos to my colleague, Paul Blumenthal, who writes the terrific In Broad Daylight blog for us, for doing the analysis to answer the question I raised this morning regarding whether the Republican lawmakers who voted against oil and gas company interests yesterday got less money from those interests than their Republican counterparts who stayed loyal to their cash constitutents. The answer: Yup, they sure did! Check out his analysis of the money from this election cycle. We're going to dig a little deeper now and see what else we find out.
Continue readingAn Answer to Ellen’s Question:
Earlier this morning at Sunspots Ellen asked whether the Republicans who voted to take back tax incentives from oil and gas companies received less money from the oil and gas interests than those voting yes. As she noted the average intake of oil and gas money by a Republican in the 2006 election cycle is $11,645 versus $4,331 for a Democrat. So, is Ellen's hunch right? Did these 66 Republicans receive less money on average than their party mates who voted against the tax incentive repeal? The answer is yes. The average amount received from the oil and gas industry by these Republicans is $5,727, almost exactly half of what an average Republican received. Looking at the members who voted it is obvious why many of them did. The majority of these lawmakers come from eastern, midwest, and northeastern states with high traffic volume and high gas prices. Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan stand out. Both Republican House members from New Hampshire voted for the incentive repeal as did the two Republicans from Maryland and all of the Republicans from Connecticut. Florida led the southern states with the most members voting for the repeal at seven. This most likely reflects anger at the oil and gas industry for trying to open up the waters off of Florida's coast to new drilling. There are a couple of lawmakers voting for repeal that are completely unexpected. The one jumps off the page at you is House Resources Chairman Richard Pombo (R-CA), known as a scourge to environmentalists and the best friend of oil and gas companies. Pombo topped all of the "Yea" Republicans with $66,200, which made him ninth overall (House and Senate) in oil and gas contributions. Why would Pombo backtrack all of a sudden? Perhaps it's California's sky high gas prices and the fact that his district is filled with commuters. But politics may be the best explanation. Pombo is facing his first serious challenge in both the Republican primary, from Endangered Species Act author Pete McCloskey, and in the general as Democrats have decided to target the Central Valley congressman. Taking a look at the list of Republicans voting here one can see that a number of them are expected to face grueling campaigns this year. CQ Politics lists 21 of these 66 Republicans as out of the "Safe Republican" category. I think that the mix of these factors - a tough political climate, a lack of pressure form large campaign contributors, and pressure from constituents - leads these Republicans to buck their leadership and vote against a well known ally.
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