Mollohan Reneges On Recusal

by Matt Margolis :: August 3, 2007 1:44 PM

Roll Call has the story...

Despite having recused himself from matters relating to the FBI - which is reportedly investigating his finances - Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday voted against an amendment that would have increased the bureau's budget by $6 million.

Republicans say Mollohan's vote proves his recusal is a sham - and claim the amendment was intended to draw him out. Democrats defended Mollohan, saying he had not participated in discussions about the agencies that are reportedly investigating him, though no one from his office or the Appropriations Committee would go on the record for this article.
[...]>
...[L]ast year [Mollohan] stepped down from the top Democratic spot on the ethics committee. In January he announced that while he was assuming the chairmanship of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies, he would recuse himself from matters dealing with the agencies investigating him.

"His pledge to recuse himself didn't hold itself through the appropriations process," King said. "I think he's stayed out of nothing. I don't see any evidence that he has. His lack of restraint [Wednesday] night indicates that it really wasn't a commitment.

"It is ridiculous to make the statement that you are going to be chairman of that committee and recuse yourself from any dealings that had to do with the dealings of the committee," King said, adding that ultimately "Mollohan broke his vow of omerta."

King offered an amendment during the floor debate to provide the FBI $1 million to speed its investigation of Mollohan, in protest of Mollohan's continued chairmanship of the subcommittee.

"[Speaker] Nancy Pelosi [D-Calif.] was wrong to hand Mollohan the gavel for Justice appropriations. Mollohan was wrong to take it, regardless of whether he is innocent or not," King said. "If the impropriety was such that it compelled him to step down from ethics, it was more compelling that he step down from Justice."

Meanwhile, The Hill clues us in to how House Democrats are trying to protect Mollohan.

The House Rules Committee stripped three of Rep. Alan Mollohan’s (D-W.Va.) earmarks from the Agriculture appropriations bill Wednesday night at the lawmaker’s request.

Committee Democrats acted in “accordance of his wishes and others’ wishes,” said John Santore, spokesman for the Rules panel.

In a self-executing rule that cannot be changed on the House floor, the panel added a “limitation to effectively eliminate three West Virginia earmarks from the committee report accompanying the bill,” the committee’s website noted.

That's the so-called "most honest, ethical, and open Congress in history,” for you.

Mollohan is reportedly under FBI investigation for his ties to nonprofit groups, the earmarks he has directed to them and real estate partnerships with at least one of their officers.

In recent weeks, Republicans and watchdog groups have criticized Mollohan for continuing to seek earmarks for some of the nonprofits in the FBI probe, including the Canaan Valley Institute (CVI) of Thomas, W.Va.

Mollohan anticipated a Republican move to strike the earmarks on the floor, as the party did with other earmarks for the Canaan Valley Institute and other West Virginia nonprofits last week, so he offered an amendment to the agriculture-spending bill that would have prevented any money in the bill from being directed to the institute, according to a Democratic aide.

Instead of forcing Mollohan to offer and debate the amendment on the floor, the Rules Committee simply struck the earmarks from the bill.

Republicans immediately questioned the move. Jo Maney, spokeswoman for panel Republicans, said it was a “completely unprecedented” use of the committee to avoid an embarrassing public capitulation.

In floor speeches, several Republicans, led by Rep. Pete Sessions (Texas), lambasted the late-night maneuver.

“This highly irregular inclusion of a self-executing rule is particularly troubling because the Canaan Valley Institute is under investigation by the FBI,” Sessions said.

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) said that Democrats have reneged on their promise to allow earmarks to be challenged on the floor.

“We have former members in jail because of earmarks we’ve approved in this body,” he said. “We simply can’t go on like this.”

Flake planned to offer an amendment to strip another Mollohan earmark, but the Defense subcommittee told his staff that it will be removing it as well as an earmark for Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) for the USS Intrepid Museum in New York City before the bill is debated on the floor, according to a GOP source with knowledge of the matter.

 0 Comments   Track   del.icio.us   digg it   IM   Facebook

Spitzer's Abuse of Power

by Matt Margolis :: July 24, 2007 9:43 PM

In 2006, many Democrats got elected by running on clean ethics pledges. Eliot Spitzer, now governor of New York, similarly pledge to clean up New York politics, and now finds himself in hot water after it was discovered his office "misused state police in a bid to tarnish a rival."

Spitzer, a Democrat, came to office in January vowing to reform the state's corrupt political ethics after winning nearly 70 percent of the vote in November 2006 -- a victory that may have bolstered an ambition for higher office.

Now he is fending off questions about his own abuse of power and Republicans say they are reinvigorated after getting routed at the polls in November.

"The sheriff of Wall Street has had the tables turned on him," said Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, referring to a reputation Spitzer picked up in his campaign against corporate malfeasance while state attorney general.

"He's being held to the same standard of aggressive reform that he had as attorney general. It's going to make it more difficult for him to govern," Sheinkopf said.

A report by Spitzer's successor as attorney general on Monday found the governor's aides directed state police to gather potentially damaging information on his chief Republican rival, state Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno.

One aide was suspended an another was reassigned. But some are not letting this go.

Some Republicans want an investigation of what the governor knew while others called the punishment insufficient.

"I don't think it's over at all. I don't know that this is the type of thing that is easily forgotten or forgiven," said Joe Mondello, chairman of the state Republican Committee.

Bruno said in a statement he was "shocked and dismayed."

"Answers must be obtained to the serious questions raised by this still unfolding situation," said Bruno, who has engaged Spitzer in bruising public disputes for months.

An editorial in the conservative New York Post said "the plot was clearly -- indisputably -- an abuse of power." The left-leaning New York Times said in an editorial Spitzer's "ability to clean up the rest of Albany could be severely compromised."

Meanwhile on Wall Street, few would seem shocked.

"The fact that he was reported to have strong-armed somebody is no surprise," said Jim Awad, chairman of Awad Asset Management. "He ran on the platform that he was going to fight hard to get his way and anybody who gets in his way is at their peril."

UPDATE: As many as four investigations possible..

Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s aides, including one of his closest advisers, improperly used the State Police to gather information about the governor’s chief rival, Joseph L. Bruno, the State Senate majority leader, in an effort to plant a negative story about Mr. Bruno and damage him politically, according to a report on Monday by the attorney general’s office.

Spitzer aides, chiefly his communications director, Darren Dopp, concocted a false story for why the information was being gathered, saying the governor’s office acted after receiving a press request seeking details of Mr. Bruno’s use of state aircraft, the report said.

Mr. Dopp later made misleading statements about the involvement of the governor’s office in the effort, the report indicates. The report concludes that Mr. Bruno’s use of the helicopters — on trips that included both political and legislative events — was proper.

Minutes after the report was made public, Mr. Spitzer announced he was suspending Mr. Dopp indefinitely without pay. He said he was also dismissing his liaison to the State Police, the assistant secretary for homeland security, William Howard, and moving him to an unspecified job outside the governor’s office.

The report was a blow to Mr. Spitzer, a former prosecutor who came into office less than seven months ago with a reputation for integrity and who promised to bring a new ethical climate to Albany.

UPDATE: DA's office whitewashing?

Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno slammed Albany District Attorney David Soares for giving Gov. Spitzer's senior staffers a chance to edit pieces of his controversial report on Albany's dirty-tricks scandal.

"This borders on a conspiracy by the district attorney and governor's office," Bruno (R-Rensselaer) said of the disclosure first reported in yesterday's Post.

Soares was looking into an alleged plot by Spitzer staffers to discredit the majority leader.

"If true, the DA's office has a lot of explaining to do. This would be worse than a whitewash," charged Bruno.

Bruno said the Ethics Commission should place Spitzer and his aides under oath publicly.

 0 Comments   Track   del.icio.us   digg it   IM   Facebook

Murtha Earmarks Trail Reminiscent of ABSCAM Scandal

by Matt Margolis :: June 25, 2007 1:55 PM

Roll Call has a very interesting story about Rep. Jack Murtha and his earmark trail.

In April 2004, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) celebrated the groundbreaking for a gleaming new office building here, designed around its anchor tenant, a Rockville, Md.-based technology company called Aeptec Microsystems.

Murtha pursued millions of dollars worth of legislative earmarks for the company, and Aeptec's federal contracts blossomed after it opened a branch in his district in 2001, rising from about $13 million in 2000 to $45.6 million in 2003 and $33 million in 2004, according to fedspending.org, a database of federal contracts. The company had been represented by two lobbying firms with close ties to Murtha: KSA Consulting and the PMA Group.

But Aeptec never moved into the Indiana building, which was built mostly with state and local development funds and remains mostly empty after opening last month. The company, also known as 3eTI, instead moved its staff of about 15 people into a nondescript office park across town, where its name is not even posted on the outside door. It has since been bought by Texas-based EFJ Inc.

Aeptec's story is not unique. Murtha has obtained millions of dollars in earmarks for firms in his district, many of them clients of PMA and KSA. But in many cases the money is not for local companies, it is for companies that move to the district, and frequently it is for start-ups that essentially would not be in business were it not for Murtha's largesse. Some of the firms also are simply store-front offices of companies that do most of their work elsewhere.

Murtha has almost - but not quite - single-handedly created a new economy in his district, with start-up companies getting Murtha earmarks, getting contracts from other companies that have gotten Murtha earmarks or getting trained on how to get government money by other institutions that have gotten Murtha earmarks.

A good guide to the patterns of Murtha's largesse is the client list of KSA Consulting, a lobbying firm that employs a former Murtha staffer and used to employ Murtha's brother, Kit Murtha.

Why is this significant? Let's flashback to Murtha's involvement in the ABSCAM scandal. The video is here, but here are some key excerpts:

"I'll tell you exactly what I'd like. I'd like to be able to tell you that there's some places I'd like you to invest some money, in banks, on my district, uh and I'd say some, you know, some substantial deposits..."

"I think that in order to introduce legislation, you have to have a real tie to the district."

"I'll give you maybe a list of businesses that I think would be the appropriate businesses that would be very helpful to me if you could see your way clear any one of those... you know, that you might -- this then would make a tie, which we'd have to make a little bit of a fuss about, maybe the guy doesn't wanna do this, but you have to remember this, you have to look down the road -- public relations."

One can't help noticing that the Roll Call report is strikingly reminiscent of Murtha's involvement in the 1980 ABSCAM scandal. From the ABSCAM video, we see Murtha establishing the same prerequisites for "doing business" that he apparently has using in recent years: Lobbyists and their clients get earmarks only if they establish "a real tie" to his district.

MORE: Murtha's earmarks 2004-2006.

 0 Comments   Track   del.icio.us   digg it   IM   Facebook

Obama Backed Rezko Project

by Matt Margolis :: June 14, 2007 11:55 PM

The connections get deeper...

Presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign confirmed Wednesday he wrote to officials on behalf of a campaign donor's housing project, saying he did so to help his community and not as a favor.

The letters first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times for Wednesday's editions were the latest disclosure of the close relationship between Obama and developer Antoin "Tony" Rezko, a longtime campaign donor now under federal indictment.

Obama was a state senator when he wrote to housing officials in October 1998 in support of a proposed apartment building for senior citizens four blocks outside of his district, according to records from the project.

Rezko and Obama's former boss, Allison S. Davis, ran the project's development company, New Kenwood LLC. The development opened in 2002 and ended up costing $14.6 million in taxpayer money, including $855,000 in development fees for New Kenwood, the newspaper reported.

Obama, of course, claims he "never used his office to do favors for Rezko."

 0 Comments   Track   del.icio.us   digg it   IM   Facebook