The bribery investigation into Sen. Ted Stevens has jumped to a whole new level. The FBI taped phone calls between Stevens and VECO executive Bill Allen in a sting operation.
Hat tip: TPM
Continue readingBest VECO Investigation Coverage
This morning a friend of mine, who is an Alaska resident, called me to ask if I could use the power of the Internet to find out if the state had released the total amount of money that he gets from the state oil dividend program, i.e.: free money for residents from oil revenues. This led me to the Anchorage Daily News Web site where the main story was, of course, the on-going investigation and court trials of Alaska politicians and oil company executives. If you're looking for coverage of this massive statewide scandal, the ADN is the place to go. I was really impressed by the amount of multimedia they have on their site. From ADN, I've embedded below the testimony of VECO executive Bill Allen where he admits to using personal funds and VECO employees to work on Sen. Ted Stevens home remodeling project, a center piece to the investigation of the senior Senator from Alaska. Allen does not sound comfortable here.
Continue readingExtreme Home Makeover Means Extreme Legal Trouble for Ted Stevens
One thing that the lobbying and ethics reform bill didn’t have to clarify was bribery; that one is already written pretty clearly into the law. Sen. Ted Stevens looks to be in serious trouble for accepting bribes in the form of an extreme home makeover. The Associated Press broke the story earlier today that VECO executive Bill Allen has testified to federal investigators, with whom he is cooperating, that he paid between one and four VECO employees to work on Stevens’ home for six months. This is in direct contradiction to Stevens’ earlier assertions that Allen did not pay for the remodeling. From the AP:
Ex-Veco Corp. CEO Bill Allen admitted in court Friday that he had company employees work several months on a remodeling project at the Girdwood home of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.
…
Under cross-examination by defense attorney James Wendt, representing former state Rep. Pete Kott, Allen acknowledged that the more than $400,000 he admitted spending in the bribery charge was for other legislators - and including for work done at the Girdwood home of Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the U.S. Senate.
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Fishy Behavior Catches Ted Stevens No Trouble on Capitol Hill
Quick addition: USA Today reached the same opinion of Stevens today as well.
According to public records and officials in Alaska, The Hill reports that Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) "has quietly steered millions of federal dollars to a sportfishing industry group founded by Bob Penney, a longtime friend who helped the Alaska Republican profit from a lucrative land deal." While the FBI, and possibly a jury, will decide if Stevens has abused his official position it is clear enough that the senior Senator has acted in a manner that is unethical for a United States Senator and a powerful committee chairman (yesterday I wrote that Stevens is the Appropriations ranking member, he is actually ranking member on the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, the second ranking member on Appropriations, and the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member).
Despite the mounting evidence against Stevens he continues to have the support of the Republican leadership and has not been stripped of his committee assignments. Sen. Larry Craig was stripped of his committee assignments and forced to resign (although he is now reconsidering) because he engaged in potentially lewd conduct that was not of the party sanctioned variety. What is more important, sexual, or potentially sexual, behavior or the betrayal of trust and abuse of official, elected positions to gain money and aid your rich buddies? I've seen this scale before and I know which way it should be tilting.
Continue readingTed Stevens Threatens to Block Ethics Bill
What happens when you combine the last two posts by Bill and myself? You get a story like this one from John Bresnahan at the Politico:
"Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, whose home back in Alaska was raided by federal investigators Monday in a wide-ranging corruption investigation, has threatened to place a hold on the Democratic-drafted ethics legislation just passed by the House and expected on the Senate floor by week’s end.
The senator told a closed session of fellow Republicans today, including Vice President Dick Cheney, that he was upset that the measure would interfere with his travel to and from Alaska – and vowed to block it."
Sen. Stevens' is apparently upset that lobbyists will no longer be able to freely ferrett him from Washington to Alaska. He is concerned that he may have to use some of those millions of dollars which he obtained with Bob Penney and Bill Allen to actually - gasp - pay for his own travel.
Sen. Stevens could always just stay in Alaska.
Continue readingTed Stevens’ Home Raided
By now, you've probably heard that agents from the FBI and the IRS raided the home of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who has been under investigation for his links to Veco Corp., whose executives have been among his top contributors over the years (and top contributors to quite a few others as well. A pair of them have also pled guilty to bribing some state lawmakers. One of the issues federal agents are investigating is the role Bill Allen, the company's CEO, played in arranging renovations to Stevens' home, which doubled its size. Stevens says he paid for the renovations out of his own pocket. This raises a question I've thought of before but have never seen satisfactorily answered -- how many kinds of favors are there that someone can do for a lawmaker that don't necessarily leave a paper trail? If someone uses his time, connections, expertise and so on to help a senator hire the right contractor, it doesn't necessarily leave any kind of record. The senator gets a thing of value--perhaps the best price or the finest quality or the fastest service--thanks the efforts of this benefactor. Perhaps it's not the name of the company to hire, but a whispered stock tip that pays off handsomely or an invitation to be in on the ground floor of a can't-miss real estate development. In any case, our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense are asking Sen. Mitch McConnell to ask Stevens to recuse himself from his committee work. Don Surber notes that Alaska has a dubious trio of lawmakers. It's pretty indicative of the state of affairs of the North to the Future state that the Anchorage Daily News has a tab on this page that says, "More Alaska Political Corruption Stories," which takes the reader to this catalog.
Continue readingA New Spate of Northern Disclosures
Writing in Roll Call, John Stanton reports that staffers of the two Senators and a relative of the lone House member from Alaska's congressional delegation own land in the undeveloped area that, should the Knik Arm "bridge to nowhere" be built, would be poised to become a prime suburb of Anchorage. (The link is subscription only, but TPM Muckraker has some quotes.) Over at RealTime, my colleague Anupama Narayanswamy has an interview with Andrew Halcro, a former Alaskan state representative, a 2006 gubernatorial candidate, and a pretty good blogger. Halcro talked about his experiences with the now former chairman and CEO of the oil services firm Veco Corp., Bill Allen, who along with another company official recently pled guilty to charges of bribing four Alaska state lawmakers.
Continue readingVeco and a Bridge to Nowhere
I doubt it had much to do with the search of Alaska state lawmakers' offices, including Ben Stevens, the son of Sen. Ted Stevens, for information on the legislators' relationship to Alaska oil services firm Veco (whose executives are prolific campaign donors to Alaskan politicians), but it's worth noting that Veco figures in one of the two "Bridges to Nowhere" -- the Knik Arm Crossing, described here as "a proposed 13,500-ft span across Knik Arm from Anchorage to hundreds of square miles of unpopulated wetlands to the north."
Continue readingFBI Investigating Top Alaska Donor
FBI agents in Alaska, armed with search warrants, descended without warning Thursday at the offices of several Alaskan lawmakers in what appears to be a major investigation involving VECO, the oil field service company that has long been one the most generous political contributors to Alaska politicians.
Among the offices searched were that of State Senate President Ben Stevens, the son of US Senator Ted Stevens, and an important political ally of VECO in the state legislature. According to the Anchorage Daily News, Stevens has closer connections to the company than simply receiving campaign contributions:
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