- Ed Buckham, the former chief of staff and religious advisor to former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), collected over $1 million through a non-profit group created while he was still under DeLay’s employ. (Washington Post) TPM Muckraker has been following Buckham’s money trail for some time. Check out their three parts series here, here, and here.
- The founder of “compassionate conservatism” Marvin Olasky is assailing former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed over his connections and dealings with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. (Washington Post)
- Robert Novak claims that Jack Abramoff is clearing DeLay from charges of corruption in his talks with investigators. Of course, the steady stream of stories like the Washington Post Ed Buckham story indicates that Abramoff is not the only corrupting influence on Capitol Hill. (Townhall.com)
- Laura Rozen notes that the wife of the mysterious Thommas Kontogiannis – one of the alleged bribers in the Duke Cunningham corruption case – gave “$18,000 to eighteen vulnerable Republican US House candidates” in 2004. Rozen writes, “These are not her local candidates, or broad nationally known candidates. Who was directing these payments to these obscure, vulnerable national Republican candidates? Who gave the Kontogiannis the Republican House play map? These payments suggest a degree of connection to someone far more central to the GOP House machine than even Cunningham.” (War and Piece)
More News:
- Will Bunch reports in the Philadelphia Daily News, “A faith-based Philadelphia group at the center of a flap over whether tax-exempt religious groups are aiding the re-election campaign of U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum has won more than $250,000 in federal grant money pushed for by Santorum over the last three years.” The group, the Urban Family Council, participated in a training session held by the ad-hoc group Pennsylvania Pastors Network, “which pushed a church-based get-out-the-vote drive for November.” Santorum addressed the meeting by video and spoke about stopping same-sex marriage raising questions about the political purposes of the tax-exempt group.
- The New York Times reports on the auction of jailed ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham’s goods. The auction netted $94,625 or, “about two-thirds of the $150,000 that the military contractors who gave the items to Mr. Cunningham as bribes reportedly paid for them.” TPM Muckraker has the full list of items and what they sold for in their document collection. The San Diego Union-Tribune has the pictures of the auction that even includes bidding paddles with the face of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert glued on.
- Adam Kidan and Jack Abramoff will be subpoenaed by the defense in the Gus Boulis murder case, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. In 2001, Boulis was ambushed and slain in his car following a bitter, months-long sale of his SunCruz casino lines to Kidan and Abramoff. Anthony Moscatiello and two associates, hired to provide security for the casino boat line, were indicted in Boulis’ murder last year. Moscatiello was hired by Kidan and Kidan “has not been eliminated as a suspect in the murder case”.
- The Washington Post looks deeper into the activities of MZM and Duke Cunningham as the Pentagon prepares to look for earmarks that Cunningham may have written for MZM:
"…prosecutors said that in fiscal 2003 legislation, the congressman, who was a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, set aside, or earmarked, $6.3 million for work to be done ‘to benefit’ the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), created in 2002. …
In 2004, three MZM employees served as staff consultants to the presidential commission investigating prewar Iraq intelligence, which was run by federal Judge Laurence H. Silberman and former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.). One of the three was retired Lt. Gen. James C. King, who then was a senior vice president of MZM for national security. King, who before joining MZM had been director of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, played a consultant's role in the establishment of CIFA in 2002 before MZM received its first contracts from that agency.
The Silberman-Robb commission report in 2005 recommended that CIFA play a bigger role in the government's counterterrorism activities.”
Silberman denies that King and the other two MZM employees played any role in recommending a bigger role for CIFA.
- MSNBC reports that Abramoff associate David Safavian is headed to court today for a pretrial hearing.
- The Christian Science Monitor provides yet another story that ethics reform is stalling in Congress. Norm Ornstein says, “Some members are pulling the blanket over their heads and hoping the storm will pass. For others, there is also a genuine belief that if you just jump in a spasm of reaction, you could do some things detrimental to a good deliberative process.”
More News:
- The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that the investigation into the bribery allegations against Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) is moving along as a Virginia court has subpoenaed records from “a law firm where one of the congressman's daughters once worked”. The judge also delayed the sentencing of Jefferson’s former aide Brent Pfeffer, who pleaded guilty to “aiding and abetting the solicitation of bribes” and implicated Jefferson as demanding bribes from technology firms.
- According to the Associated Press, Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO) and the Missouri House Democratic Congressional Committee are being fined for “various campaign finance violations.” The State Ethics commission found that the committee “failed to file proper financial reports and mixed money with another campaign committee” during the 2002 campaign and the Carnahan “signed checks for the committee that he wasn't authorized to.”
- Barbara Bush’s donation to the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund was earmarked for her son Neil’s technology firm Ignite!, according to the Houston Chronicle.
- Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) is warning his constituents that earmarks are under attack and that Alaska risks losing its share of federal money, according to the Associated Press.
- Bloomberg reports on the attempt to attach 527-reform to the lobbying and ethics reform legislation.
- Patt Morrison of the Los Angeles Times goes down to the Duke Cunningham auction and exposes what Cunningham bought with all of that dirty money. Morrison is disappointed: “You sell out your career, your reputation and your freedom, and this is your asking price?”
Get a Piece of History:
Looking for a piece of congressional history, a silver Ferrari, a 19th century Louie-Philippe commode, or rare coins? This Thursday, “members of the public will have a chance to bid on dozens of luxury items that” jailed ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham purchased with the bribes he accepted from Mitchell Wade and Brent Wilkes, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. The Toledo Blade also reports a scandal auction, this one at the state level. The coins that Republican fundraiser Tom Noe illegally invested Ohio state money in are going on sale. Bids are due by March 29th.
Continue readingWade Pushed Contracting Practices to the Limit:
The Washington Post provides the story behind the rise and fall of Mitchell Wade, the defense contractor convicted of bribing ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham and defense department officials, and passing along illegal donations to two other lawmakers. Wade, who learned the intricacies of the procurement process from working as a civilian worker at the Pentagon and as an apprentice to Brent Wilkes, another contractor implicated in the Cunningham bribery, took existing practices and pushed them to the limit to become a contracting powerhouse. Wade “aggressively used the ‘revolving door’ between the government's defense and intelligence bureaucracy and the private industry,” hiring “top talent” and “freely distributed title and rank, appointing more than 100 vice presidents, executive vice presidents and ‘senior executive vice presidents’” while paying higher wages than any other defense contractor would offer for officials with security clearances. Wade found the global war on terrorism good for business as a Knight Ridder report shows that the Pentagon hired his MZM to “collect data on houses of worship, schools, power plants and other locations in the United States.”
Continue readingDefense Department Opened Investigation into Contractor in 2000:
The Department of Defense opened a criminal investigation into the activities of defense contractor Brent Wilkes, now under federal investigation for his role in bribing jailed ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham, back in 2000 that began with an anonymous tip, according to Roll Call. In the Defense Criminal Investigation Service report a Defense Department official, “Official D,” details “an attempt by Cunningham to pressure him into allowing payment of $750,000 for five allegedly fraudulent invoices submitted to the Pentagon in 1998 and 1999.” Justice Department documents show that the invoices came from Wilkes and his company, ADCS. The DCIS made a criminal referral to the Justice Department that was not taken up by the U.S. Attorney in San Diego. Wilkes paid Cunningham his first bribe the month before “Official D” was interviewed.
Continue readingContractor Used ‘Straw’ Donors to Contribute to Lawmakers:
A defense contractor’s use of ‘straw’ donors for political contributions has “raised new questions” about two lawmakers, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) and Rep. Katharine Harris (R-FL), and “the tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions he steered to the two GOP lawmakers.” According to Roll Call, Mitchell Wade, guilty of bribing former Rep. Duke Cunningham and violating federal election laws, “funneled $78,000 in illegal campaign donations from 2003 to 2005 to Goode and Harris through 39 “straw” donors, all of whom were MZM employees or their spouses.” The Justice Department document states that neither Harris nor Goode knew that the contributions were illegal and both have denied wrongdoing. However, Goode, a recipient of $90,000 from Wade and MZM, wrote an earmark that secured “$3.6 million in federal defense funds that went to MZM for a facility in Martinsville, Va., and he was also instrumental in securing $500,000 in state grants to purchase the site.”
Continue readingContractor Pleads Guilty in Congressional Bribery Case:
Mitchell Wade, the head of the Washington firm MZM, Inc., pleaded guilty “to his role in lavishing more than $1 million in gifts on a California congressman,” according to the Associated Press. That congressman, Duke Cunningham, resigned from Congress after pleading guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from Wade and the San Diego defense contractor Brent Wilkes. Wade’s bribes to Cunningham included purchasing the congressman’s house at a price inflated by $700,000 and buying him a $140,000 yacht, nicknamed the ‘Dukestir’. Wilkes and the other co-conspirators – Thomas Kontogiannis and John T. Michael – have yet to plead in the case.
Continue readingLawmakers Disgusted by Bribe Menu:
The former peers of convicted Representative Duke Cunningham are revolted by the fact that he created a ‘bribe menu’ that listed earmarks he could get for a contractor alongside the money and favors that he would ask for in return. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, fellow California Republican Darrell Issa, even though he doesn’t “want to see anybody rot in jail for the sake of rotting in jail,” is calling for the maximum10 year sentence because, “I believe that anything less is going to send the wrong message about how … you should treat somebody who betrays the public trust at this level.” Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), both close to Cunningham and the alleged bribers, Brent Wilkes and Mitchell Wade, refused to comment on the bribe menu. Hunter instead attacked the prosecutors saying that they were, “eking out their most damaging evidence … to bolster their position.”
Continue readingEarmarks Meant Business for Embattled Lobbyist:
Alleged ‘co-conspirator #1’ in the Duke Cunningham bribery investigation Brent Wilkes parlayed his ability to secure earmarks into profitable business ventures. According to the Washington Post, Wilkes found promising technology companies and made a deal with them: he would secure millions of dollars in earmarks and in return he would receive a 51 percent interest in the company. The Post reports that, “Although it is common for lobbying firms to charge clients large fees to pursue earmarks, Wilkes's demand for a majority interest in the resulting contract is highly unusual”. Wilkes did not only get Cunningham to insert earmarks for his companies. He also had Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) place a $37 million earmark into the defense budget for PerfectWave Technologies in 2002. From 2002 to 2005 Doolittle received $85,000 in campaign contributions from Wilkes.
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