A week ago it was reported that Justice Department lawyers had concluded at the time that the DeLay redistricting plan of 2003 violated the Voting Right Act, but that senior DOJ officials overruled that finding and okayed DeLay's plan anyway.
Justice Department officials have now instituted a policy to assure this never happens again. They have, as reported in today's Post, "barred staff attorneys from offering recommendations in major Voting Rights Act cases, marking a significant change in the procedures meant to insulate such decisions from politics."
It's the Bush model: politics over expertise and/or law. Whether it's at the Pentagon, the CIA, Justice or the EPA hardly matters. The formula is consistent throughout.
--Josh Marshall
Bush-administration officials privately threatened organizers of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, telling them that any chance there might’ve been for the United States to sign on to the Kyoto global-warming protocol would be scuttled if they allowed Bill Clinton to speak at the gathering today in Montreal, according to a source involved with the negotiations who spoke to New York Magazine on condition of anonymity.Bush officials informed organizers of their intention to pull out of the new Kyoto deal late Thursday afternoon, soon after news leaked that Clinton was scheduled to speak, the source said.
The threat set in motion a flurry of frantic back-channel negotiations between conference organizers and aides to Bush and Clinton that lasted into the night on Thursday, and at one point Clinton flatly told his advisers that he was going to pull out and not deliver the speech, the source said.
Priorities.
--Josh Marshall
Over at Kevin Drum's site I saw a link to this article about, or interview with, Marcus Stern, the guy who broke the Duke Cunningham story last summer. The San Diego CityBEAT interviewed him by phone from Pakistan where he's now on assignment for another story.
We now know something like a million things Duke did wrong. But, remember, it all started with that suspicious over-market-price home sale to defense contractor Mitchell Wade. Once that first corrupt blood was in the water, the piranhas started circling and soon everything came out -- though Stern got a number of the subsequent scoops as well.
There's always been a lot of speculation about what tripped Duke up. Did someone drop a dime on him? A pissed off contractor? Political opponents? Or even political friends?
That's not what happened, says Stern.
Stern told CityBEAT that it was a combination of those fishy trips to Saudi Arabia we've discussed, Cunningham's behavior and just some good old fashioned reporting.
Here's the key passage ...
With that red flag on Cunningham’s travels, Stern, in May, filled a few idle hours at his desk by performing routine “lifestyle audits” of members of the California Congressional delegation. That’s when he stumbled upon the sale of Cunningham’s home.“I basically kicked over this one last stone, which was looking to see if he had upgraded his living accommodations,” Stern said. What he found was that Cunningham had purchased a new home in the exclusive neighborhood of Rancho Santa Fe for $2.55 million.
“That seemed like a substantial upgrade to me, so I looked at how he did that,” Stern said. Using a variety of public records, he traced the details surrounding the sale of Cunningham’s old home in Del Mar.
“When I looked to see who bought it, I saw it was something called 1523 New Hampshire Avenue Inc.,” he said. Recognizing the company’s name as possibly linked to a Washington, D.C., address, Stern did a quick search and found that it was the same location as the D.C. headquarters of Wade’s company, MZM Inc.
“All of a sudden I got very interested,” he said. “From the time I started looking at the house until the time I understood what was going on took about 15 minutes. I think that they thought they were covering it up, but they covered it up with Plexiglas.”
Some stories get busted open with instincts and doggedness. Access sometimes just gets in the way.
--Josh Marshall
Get out those tinfoil hats ...
WaPo:"The Carlyle Group is among the final bidders for the Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins restaurant chains, in what would be the first U.S. consumer retail investment for a company built around its expertise in defense, aerospace and telecommunications."
--Josh Marshall
TPM Reader JO is willing to give Rep. Ney (R-OH) his due ...
"Ney returned to the same casino on a personal trip later in 2003 and reported on his financial disclosure form that he won $34,000. Walsh has said Ney parlayed a $100 bet into the large winning on two hands of a three-card game of chance."That's the trick Rick used in Casablanca to help the young Bulgarian woman get an exit visa for herself and her husband without having to sleep with Louie. Of course, Ney and his cronies cleverly disguised the scheme by changing it from roulette (a couple of bets on good ol' 22) to a card game.
I'm no fan of bribery, but if Ney is going to put his hand out, his homage to Bogie at least shows that he's a crook with an appreciation for a great movie.
Certainly, snazzier than overpaying for your house.
(ed.note: Just to be clear, there is no conclusive evidence that Ney's boffo card game winnings were the product of more than luck. JO is speculating. Then again, there's pretty ripe pickings for speculation.)
--Josh Marshall
Points for originality?
From the Columbus Dispatch (sub.req.) ...
Citing national security, Rep. Bob Ney won't provide details about a 2003 trip to England courtesy of an obscure company called FN Aviation.But a previously unreported link has emerged between the Heath Republican and the British company that had an office in Cyprus: FN Aviation employed a pair of lobbyists with ties to Ney.
The same year FN Aviation spent $2,700 on Ney's trip, it paid $20,000 to a former Ney chief of staff turned lobbyist, David DiStefano, to monitor Capitol Hill trade legislation, records show.
A bit further down in the article there's this passage ...
Ney had dinner during the trip at a posh London casino with FN Aviation Director Nigel Winfield, a convicted felon whose offenses have included tax evasion, and Fouad al-Zayat, a Syrian-born businessman known as a high-stakes casino gambler. Walsh has said Ney did not know about Winfield's background.Ney returned to the same casino on a personal trip later in 2003 and reported on his financial disclosure form that he won $34,000. Walsh has said Ney parlayed a $100 bet into the large winning on two hands of a three-card game of chance.
Good work if you can get it.
--Josh Marshall
Just a few more days for our Muckraking Fund fundraiser. We just went past 2100 contributors. And we're trying to get to 3000 by Thursday. For more details, click here. And thanks for your interest in contributing.
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Burns (R-MT) to start fighting back against Abramoff charges -- after Christmas.
--Josh Marshall
Some of the letters we get ...
Dear J. M. Marshall,I read the Atlantic's Fallows piece in its entirety and found it a lot of hot air, and somewhat out of date, too. He has a knack of saying nothing fairly elegantly and at great length.
What's happening on the ground is we're getting 4,500 hotline tips a month vs. 500 six months ago, according to Gen. Pace. This means Iraq has "tipped" our way. So do the climbing real estate prices, the firm dinar, the returning emigres, the pathetic selection of soft targets by the remaining bombers, etc. The "victory" campaign just kicked off by Dubya fits this pattern, too. Ask Joe Lieberman...
Don't be surprised if Bush is speaking before a wildly cheering Iraqi parliament next summer, with the country almost totally peaceful. Such an event is not unlikely. And you know what that will do to elections for '06 and '08, don't you. From Alger Hiss to George McGovern to Howard Dean and John Kerry, the Democrats have been (accurately) typed as weak on national security. That is deeply embedded in the public mind. So long as the islamoterror continues, you may never get the majority again.
Many of us have been saying for a long time it would all boil down to what happened on the ground in Iraq. I still think so, and so do most Democrats. But they and you are too incestuous to see what is happening on the ground. It's Bush-Rove uber alles.
LH
I think quantum theory predicts these alternative universes.
--Josh Marshall
Like that songworthy ant, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), well ... he's got high hopes. A week ago back in Cleveland, Ney was asked whether he thought the Abramoff investigation would have any effect on his or other Republicans' reelection prospects next year.
"I don't believe so," said Ney, "As far as any controversy on any member, I don't think that will affect midterm elections. It's a long time off."
Like I said, high hopes. Especially considering, as the Washington Post puts it in tomorrow's paper, "prosecutors have told Ney they are preparing a possible bribery indictment against him over official acts that benefited clients of Abramoff."
And you have to figure the case will be pretty strong. Two of the key principals in the prospective case have already agreed to testify against him. First, was Michael Scanlon, Abramoff's right hand man who handled the quids for Ney's quos. And now Adam Kidan, the once-owner of SunCruz, is agreeing to testify against him too, another guy who gave Ney a bunch of quids.
What law of gravity that I don't know about says this dude isn't finished?
--Josh Marshall
A race to watch?
From The Hill ...
As the political climate has turned sour for Republicans, Rep. Charles Taylor (R-N.C.) finds himself trailing his Democratic challenger by tens of thousands of dollars, dogged by ethics charges and running in an increasingly Democratic district.Former NFL quarterback Heath Shuler (D) is challenging Taylor, in the 11st District, in rural, western North Carolina.
At the end of the third quarter, Shuler had $248,957 in the bank while Taylor had just $19,369, according to Federal Election Commission reports.
During the same period, Shuler raised $263,642; Taylor took in $134,791.
Taylor, you'll remember, is the fella who couldn't quite come up with a straight story about whether he voted yes or no or even voted at all on CAFTA. Have to imagine Shuler will want to bring up that bizarre story.
--Josh Marshall
Hugh Bancroft III, a member of the Bancroft family that owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal, buys Duke Cunningham's house for $2.6 million.
The house appreciated a mere 2% over two years.
Back in August, before the bottom fell out, Duke put it on the market for $3.5 million.
In other news of Cunningham's lack of prescience, this article from the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that in 1995 Duke "co-authored a bill called the "No Frills Prison Act" to prevent 'luxurious' prison conditions. The bill prohibited unmonitored phone calls, in-cell TVs, coffee pots or hot pots, viewing of R-rated movies, food better than what enlisted Army personnel get or unauthorized hygiene products or clothing."
It didn't pass.
--Josh Marshall
How did Duke Cunningham manage to get so far entangled in an ethics mess that he had to plead guilty to federal charges of accepting bribes without anyone referring his case to the House ethics committee?
Think about that for a second. With all that came out about Cunningham over the last six months and not one Democrat even filed a complaint against him, let alone any Republicans?
One of the big reasons is that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made it very clear that she did not want that to happen.
Melanie Sloan explains why.
Give this one a read. It's an important story that is too little understood.
--Josh Marshall
I hear Nancy Pelosi has just introduced a 'Privileged Resolution on Culture of Corruption Surrounding Prescription Drug Bill' which focuses on what is now the common practice of holding votes open so Reps. can be stronged-armed and de facto bribed as in the Nick Smith case back in 2003. Looks like another raucous night coming in the House.
A portion of the resolution, I'm told, runs as follows ...
Whereas the recurring practice of improperly holding votes open for the sole purpose of overturning the will of the majority, including bullying and threatening Members to vote against their conscience, has occurred eight times since 2003, and three times in the 109th Congress alone;Whereas on November 22, 2003, the Republican Leadership held open the vote on H.R. 1, the Prescription Drug Conference Report, for nearly three hours, the longest period of time in the history of electronic voting in the U.S. House of Representatives;
Whereas the normal period of time for a recorded vote is 15 minutes, and the Speaker of the House has reiterated that policy on Opening Day of each Congress by saying, "The Chair announced, and then strictly enforced, a policy of closing electronic votes as soon as possible after the guaranteed period of 15 minutes";
Whereas the sole purpose of holding the Prescription Drug vote open was to undermine the will of the House, and reverse the position that a majority of the House of Representatives had taken during the entire vote;
Whereas it was widely reported in the press that former Representative Nick Smith (R-MI) was bribed on the House floor, and the incident was described in Robert Novak's column in the Chicago Sun-Times, November 27, 2003: "Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father's vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After (Rep.) Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, (Rep.) Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat";
Whereas the cost of the Prescription Drug bill was a critical factor in determining the votes of many Members of Congress and Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, conducted numerous estimates indicating the cost to be much higher, including a June 11, 2003 analysis of a similar plan in the Senate which
More on this momentarily ...
Late Update: We've just posted the whole document here at the TPM Document Collection.
--Josh Marshall
Alright, we're making one more big push for our TPM Muckraking Fund fundraiser. It ends next week. And we want to do everything we can to get to 3000 contributors. We're now right about 2000. So we've got a ways to go.
For everyone who's contributed thus far, a very sincere thank you.
We've explained a few times what we're raising the funds for. But let me briefly cover the main points again.
As you can see from a slew of the posts below, there's just no end of scandals, investigations and -- generally speaking -- muck to be raked nowadays. So we're setting up a new website -- TPMmuckraker.com. As it's name implies, the site will be dedicated to the proud tradition of journalistic muckraking, particularly, and for the foreseeable future, to the expanding web of public corruption scandals enveloping Washington today.
Many of the topics and style of reportage will be what you've come to expect from this site. But there's only so much one person can do. Every day plenty of leads I get go unfollowed up just because other subjects need to be written about or through plain shortage of time. So we're hiring two full-time reporter-bloggers who will dig into all these stories, report them out, dig through public records to find the scoops others are missing and -- more than anything else -- put the whole story in context.
What is it Jack Abramoff is accused of exactly? Or Bob Ney? How do Abramoff's high-profile dealings with Tom DeLay and other DC powerbrokers connect to this bizarre casino boat case down in Florida? What's all this business about sweatshops in the Marianas islands and what does it have to do with members of Congress who represents me?
Believe me, I spend all day on it and half the time I can't even remember.
It's our premise, based on extensive reporting, that these often complicated and seemingly unrelated scandals are much more closely connected than most people realize. They are all part and parcel of the political machine DeLay, Abramoff and others created to take and hold political power in Washington.
The problem is that there are so many details and just so much going on, that it's really hard to keep track of. The daily press, by the very nature of the medium, has a hard time following these stories in any way but episodically. So the big picture is always in danger of being missed, something the bad actors involved would very much like to see happen.
That's where we think we can find a niche, with two full-time reporter-bloggers working with the our existing two-person TPM team, digging into the details, breaking news and putting it all together in an accessible and comprehensible way so the big picture doesn't get missed.
That's what we want to do. To a great degree, it's an experiment in a new form of journalism but one rooted in the same sort of dogged pursuit of stories and uncompromising dedication to the facts. We plan on hiring our two reporter-bloggers before the holidays and launching the site late next month. If you want to be part of what we're doing, you can help us by chipping in a few dollars toward our reporter-bloggers' salaries.
--Josh Marshall
Let the bamboozlement begin!
This just out from The Hill ...
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is planning a public-relations offensive tying leading Democrats to lobbyist Jack Abramoff in an effort to neutralize accusations that Republicans have been embroiled in a “culture of corruption.”
This is choice stuff. But as we saw with the recent example of a Washingtonpost.com editor intentionally distorting a scandal story to make it more 'balanced', there's a real appetite for this sort of mumbojumbo among a lot of reporters and editors.
So it'll make sense for everyone to keep their eyes open.
And as long as we're on the subject. Lobbyists give money to lots of people. They only commit crimes with some of them. If this is such a non-partisan thing, why is it that the only members of Congress targetted by the Abramoff investigation just happen to be Republicans? And that from a Republican led Justice Department?
Hmmm.
--Josh Marshall
Not quite sure what to make of this.
According to today's LATimes, Brent Wilkes (owner of Duke Cunningham) contributed more than $70,000 to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's various campaigns and campaign committees. He then got two gubernatorial appointments once Arnold became governor.
Unfortunately, appointments for big contributors is hardly out of the ordinary. With ambassadorial appointments abroad it is almost considered a given, though President Bush has done it a lot more than most.
In any case, what catches my eye is that both of Wilkes appointments were tied to the regulation of gambling, particularly horse racing tracks. Is there more here than meets the eye?
--Josh Marshall
Statement just out from Sen. Feingold ...
I will do everything I can, including a filibuster, to stop this Patriot Act conference report, which does not include adequate safeguards to protect our constitutional freedoms. The version of the Patriot Act that was signed today is a major disappointment. I appreciate that it includes four-year sunsets on three controversial provisions, but merely sunsetting bad law is not adequate. We need to make substantive changes to the law, and without those changes I am confident there will be strong, bipartisan opposition here in the Senate.This isn't about stopping Patriot Act reauthorization. The President could sign Patriot Act reauthorization legislation into law tomorrow if the House would just take up and pass the compromise Senate bill that was approved unanimously in the Senate earlier this year – a bill that includes important and reasonable privacy protections. The conference committee had the opportunity to fix many of the provisions of the Patriot Act to which Americans across the political spectrum have voiced their opposition over the last four years. Unfortunately, they decided not to listen. This battle is not over.
Let me take this opportunity to remind everyone that Sen. Feingold will be guest-blogging next week at TPMCafe's Table for One, where he'll be discussing the Patriot Act reauthorization and other issues as well as responding to your questions.
--Josh Marshall
Andrew Sullivan beat me to it. That is, he linked to this sadly hilarious quote in which UN Ambassador John Bolton attacked the UN high commissioner for human rights for having the temerity to criticize US torture policies. Bolton said it was "inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second-guess the conduct that we're engaged in in the war on terror."
Like I said, both sad and hilarious.
Check out the rest of Andrew's comments.
--Josh Marshall
Last night we discussed former Abramoff business partner Adam Kidan's apparent decision to cop a plea in the SunCruz case and testify against Abramoff. TPM Reader JVO has a possible answer to my questions about the plea deal and the Boulis murder ...
Josh,I read the Sun Sentinal article as saying that Kidan would probably cop a plea with regards to federal charges he and Ambramoff face, then deal with the state murder rap afterwards. In other words, get all the non-murder charges off his plate in one swoop by turning in Jack...then deal with the murder charges as a seperate issue.
The plea(s) wouldn't apply to the murder case, since the murder charge is state matter and the fraud/conspiracay charges are a federal matter.
Kidan is probably realizing that federal "white collar" charges are the least of his worries. Why not sign a plea now and get them out of the way so he can start preparing for the big trial with the hitmen? Plus, he needs some practice at turning on Jack. Pinning that murder on Abramoff will be no easy trick in the coming months. I guess their friendship has hit the skids, huh?
JVO
That makes. If anyone else has info on this, let me know.
--Josh Marshall
In Roll Call this morning John Bresnahan has a piece (sub.req.) on Alan Mollohan (D-WV), ranking member of the House Ethics committee. It seems Mollohan received a bunch of campaign contributions from Mitchell Wade's MZM in addition to another company that sometimes partnered with MZM.
As Bresnahan writes:"The donations to Mollohan were perfectly legal. But the fact that the top ethics cop for House Democrats received significant sums from the company behind Congress’ biggest bribery scheme in recent memory opens him up to conflict-of-interest questions in any future ethics investigation involving MZM."
In other words, in this case, Mollohan may be the unwitting beneficiary of the GOP shutdown of the ethics committee, seeing as Duke was able to go from ethical questions to legal questions to bribery investigation to resignation and the slammer without so much as the ethics committee making a peep.
Also fair to say that even with the shutdown, Nancy Pelosi seems to have kept any Dem from so much as lodging an ethics complaint against the formerly high-flying Duke.
--Josh Marshall
Oh boy. That's not a good development for Jack Abramoff.
According to an article just posted in the Sun-Sentinal, Adam Kidan looks set to flip and testify against Abramoff in SunCruz case down in Florida.
A "change of plea" hearing has been set for December 15th.
Here's something I don't quite get though. As we've noted many times before, there's at least some very suggestive evidence that Kidan played a role in the death of Gus Boulis, the guy he and Jack bought SunCruz from.
Even that is a bit generous: Kidan was in a feud with Boulis that had already led to one physical altercation between the two men. Then or around that time Kidan, who has a history of mafia associations, puts three known mobsters on the SunCruz payroll, hiring them as either caterers or 'security consultants' or both. Then those three guys mow Boulis down in a gangland style hit.
You know, call me suspicious.
Anyway, here are the last few grafs of the aformentioned Sun-Sentinel piece ...
Soon after receiving the loan agreement, Foothill and Citadel released $60 million to Kidan and Abramoff's company. But Boulis maintained that he never saw a penny and the relationship with Kidan, who took over the day-to-day operations of SunCruz, quickly soured. Lawsuits and counter-lawsuits were filed and threats were reportedly made.By November 2000, Kidan had contacted an old friend, Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello. Moscatiello had signed a contract with SunCruz to be a "catering consultant" at $25,000 a month, according to court records. Kidan said he thought Boulis was going to kill him, according to statements Moscatiello gave police. Moscatiello, a known associate of the late crime boss John Gotti, promised to smooth things over.
Moscatiello put Kidan in touch with Anthony "Little Tony" Ferrari, who ran "Moon Over Miami Beach," a company that, among other things, is described in records as a security firm. One of the men who worked for Ferrari was James "Pudgy" Fiorillo. In September, Moscatiello, Ferrari and Fiorillo were indicted in Boulis' murder. Kidan has not been charged in the case.
After being arrested, Moscatiello told detectives that Fiorillo traveled to his Queens home two weeks after the murder and confided that Kidan reportedly told Ferrari to kill Boulis, according to court records. Moscatiello said Fiorillo also indicated that he and Ferrari carried out the hit, the documents show. Moscatiello told detectives, "I told Adam what had happened, what I was told and he told me he never made no phone call and after Tony Ferrari told me it was a lie, I never discussed it anymore with Adam."
So Moscatiello comes in to "smooth things over" and somehow Boulis ends up dead. And one of the killers directly implicates Kidan. But in the lede, the article says that Kidan will also agree to testify against Moscatiello, Fiorillo and Ferrari, while he isn't charged with anything related to Boulis' murder.
Now, I'm sure Kidan's more than happy to testify against those dudes. But it seems to me that given the associations, context and movements of money, it would be awfully hard to see where these three whacked Boulis without also believing that Kidan wasn't part of it. Or, for that matter, Jack Abramoff, who was Kidan's partner in SunCruz.
Both guys happened to be out of the country when Boulis was iced.
Is it really possible that they pass on charging Kidan for a killing if he was the guy who ordered the hit? Or is the theory of the case that Kidan just wanted these three gents to sit down with Gus and have a talk and things got out of hand?
I know plea bargains and the logic of indictments can lead to some odd choices. But I really can't wait to see how they fit these pieces together.
--Josh Marshall
Can't say I think it'll say up there too long. But TPM Reader BM points out that if you go over to the RNC web site and scroll down and to the right, their top 'Upcoming Event' is the birthday or Rep. Duke Cunningham on December 8th.
I guess they just want to make clear there are no hard feelings.
--Josh Marshall
A name now coming up more and more frequently in Abramoff investigation news is that of Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Resources.
That was prime territory for Jack Abramoff, seeing as the Resources Committee has jurisdiction over Indian tribal affairs, Pacific island territories as well as environment and natural resources -- pretty much one-stop shopping for a guy like Jack.
So I went back through our stack of unpublished Team Abramoff emails to see how often folks from Pombo's office showed up on the Abramoff skybox freebie list.
Pretty often, it turns out.
Here's what we found for the year 2000, with the event in question, the Pombo staffer and the number of skybox seats they bagged.
February 15th, 2000, Capitals/Avalanche Hockey Game
Todd Willens, Legislative Director, 4 tickets
March 24th, 2000, Circus
Douge Heye, Press Secretary, 2 tickets
April 30th, 2000, WWF Backlash Live
Doug Heye, Press Secretary, 2 tickets
August 6th 2000, WWF Attitude (with appearances by The Rock, Triple H, The Big Show, Chyna, Chris Jericho and the Undertaker), MCI Center.
Doug Heye, Press Secretary, 2 tickets
October 2nd, 2000 WWF Raw Is War, MCI Center.
Doug Heye, Press Secretary, 2 tickets.
Bear in mind that in 2000, Pombo wasn't chairman, but only a junior member of the committee. After the 2002 election, Tom DeLay stunned fellow committee members by promoting Pombo to Chairman, despite the fact that he was only the 10th most senior member of the committee.
"The vote came down to Pombo and [Rep. Elton] Gallegly," wrote a local paper at the time, "but in the end, Pombo was buoyed by strong support from House Republican Leader Tom DeLay and others, said several Republicans involved in the selection process."
--Josh Marshall
It looks like the Pacific Island component of the Jack Abramoff story is coming back to the fore. So let's review one part of that story.
Abramoff's first big gig was to defend the garment industry in the Marianas islands from any laws which would prevent them from running sweatshops that produced goods with the 'Made in the USA' label.
One of the biggest of these operations is that of Tan Holdings, owned by Willie Tan. The way their highly lucrative garment operations worked was to import labor from China and other Asian nations, set them up in barracks working up to 90 hours a week, and pay them third world wages. These clothes could then be stamped "Made in the USA" and imported into the states duty-free because the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands is a US territory.
That gave the Tan operations and others on the island a clear competitive advantage against genuine third world garment sweatshops, which can't use the "Made in the USA" label, and actual garment factories in the USA which have to abide by 20th century labor standards.
You see, there's a niche for everyone in this world.
In addition to inhuman working conditions and terrible wages, the garment workers brought to Marianas were subjected to other fun stuff like beatings and forced abortions.
Anyway, Abramoff's job was to fend off repeated efforts through the 1990s to crack down on the working conditions on the island which approached something similar to indentured servitude. And he got Tom DeLay and other Republican members of Congress to vociferously champion the cause of Marianas island sweatshops.
One of the things Tan did for Abramoff was to pay -- along with two of Abramoff's Indian clients, the Choctaw and the Chitimacha -- the fees for the skyboxes Abramoff rented at sports complexes around DC.
These are the skyboxes he used to give away freebies to congressional staffers like Mark Graul, chief of staff to Rep. Mark Green of Wisconsin as well as host fundraisers for sundry pols.
Here's the exchange of emails between Abramoff and Willie Tan in which Abramoff hits up Tan for his quarterly payment.
--Josh Marshall
Lotsa trouble for Rep. Tom DeLay. Governor-Elect of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands agrees to cooperate in the investigation of DeLay and Abramoff. More details here.
--Josh Marshall
One of the reasons I'm so excited about our soon-to-be-launched Muckraking site is that I want to be able to dig into these stories in more depth, something that can be hard to do with one person. But for the moment, let me draw your attention to this piece that ran yesterday in The Hill about Cunningham-co-conspirator #1 Brent Wilkes and all his companies.
Brent Wilkes didn't just hire lots of lobbyists. He actually opened his own DC lobby shop, Group W Advisors. Group W hired Alexander Strategy Group, which, as The Hill rightly notes, is "a well-known conduit to Rep. Tom DeLay."
That's a string worth pulling, especially considering DeLay's other ties to Wilkes.
At some point we'll discuss how part of Jack Abramoff's downfall can be tied to feuding between the Abramoff faction of Team DeLay and the Ed Buckham faction centered on Alexander Strategy Group. The story has a lot to do with a fellow named Tony Rudy.
--Josh Marshall
From today's edition of The Nelson Report about that grand jury meeting Pat Fitzgerald held today ...
The line between gossip and intelligence is too-often thin, as we’ve seen the past few years. With that caution in mind, Washington buzz today focused on reports of a three-hour grand jury meeting (presentation?) by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, with no witnesses called. Our legal advisors confess no inside information, but say this sort of an event usually precedes an indictment being handed down.If so, who...whom...might be the lucky winner this time? The afternoon betting line is White House political guru Karl Rove, who’s earlier “exoneration” was very much exaggerated by Republicans eager to have the whole Wilson/Plame case “closed” with the indictment of VP Cheney’s then-chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
Subsequent stories revealing earlier “leaks” on the CIA’s Plame, especially those involving Washington Post reporter/superstar Bob Woodward, have added to the sex appeal of the whole thing, but really add up to more confusion, rather than settling the various theories about Rove’s role, and thus any legal vulnerability for anyone else involved.
And, of course, the whole thing today could be a false alarm, or a misunderstanding of Fitzgerald’s modus operandi.
We shall see.
--Josh Marshall
We're just getting in our first reports about what happened today in the Tobin-phone-jamming trial up in New Hampshire. And unlike yesterday, it apparently didn't go at all well for Tobin. The key reason was the testimony of Allen Raymond, the head of GOP Marketplace, the political consultancy and phone bank operation that actually implemented the sabotaging of the Democratic and union phone banks.
A TPM Reader who's been following this case closely for literally years was in the courtroom today and sent us in a report on what happened today. We've just posted it over at TPMCafe.
Tip: Check out item #4 on our Reader's list. Sounds to me like the sort of thing that could sink Tobin in the eyes of jurors.
--Josh Marshall
He doth seetheth too much?
Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) says he's just "seething" about what a crook Duke Cunningham turned out to be and "he can't remember a time I've been more angry."
Only, as Ellen Miller reports, Lewis was getting big bucks from the same folks labelled as 'coconspirators' in Duke's guilty plea.
(ed.note: I was going to say that Lewis represents the district where I spent most of my childhood years. But from what I can tell from looking it up at the House database, the town of Upland, California is now represented by Rep. David Dreier (R-CA). Does anyone remember whether Lewis's district used to include Upland.)
--Josh Marshall
Last week we mentioned that in a 'scandal scorecard' on his new Washington Post blog The Fix, Chris Cillizza included a reference to a former Democratic congressman who resigned from Congress for crimes committed before he was even elected, in an apparent effort to make the scorecard look less overwhelmingly weighted toward Republicans.
This morning a TPM Reader asked Cillizza about it in a reader chat.
Here's the exchange with emphasis added ...
New York, N.Y.: In your recent corruption roundup, you set up some ground rules that you'll only deal with current members of Congress or governors. Yet, you broke your own rules by including Rep Frank Ballance (D) who resigned in June, 2004. You omitted Connecticut Governor John Rowland (R) who also resigned in June, 2004. Why break your own rules for one but not the other?The only thing I can think of is that you made a list and found that there are a lot more Republicans than Democrats on the list. So in an effort to appeared unbiased, you had to find another Democrat.
Cillizza: This was an editorial mixup. In my original post, Ballance was not included since, as you rightly point out, he is not a sitting member of Congress. After an edit, Ballance was unnecessarily included for, frankly, balance. I did not read the final edit and therefore was unaware that Ballance had been added to the list. I apologize for my editor's error (he's been flogged). And let no man (or woman) say The Fix opposes full disclosure.
Kudos to Chris for being candid and transparent about what happened. But this does give some insight into what's going on behind the scenes in the reporting on many of these scandals. In this case, reality apparently wasn't balanced enough. So an editor at the Post tipped the scales.
--Josh Marshall
One of the many unfortunate things about the current debate over Iraq is how divorced it seems from the particulars of what actually appears to be happening on the ground. Many of you will already have read them, but let me point out two articles in the current Atlantic that get into some of that nitty-gritty.
One is the already much-discussed piece by James Fallows, "Why Iraq Has No Army". Unfortunately, at the moment, it's locked behind their subscription wall. But it's worth picking up a copy of the hardcopy to read. It's one of those masterful Fallows' pieces, just at the level of execution. As one who's tried, it's terribly difficult to keep one of these articles aloft page after page, especially when there's no conventional narrative arc to give form to the effort.
The topic is as the title suggests: why doesn't Iraq have its own security forces, despite more than two years of efforts to build them up. My one slight criticism of Fallows piece (though he's certainly aware of the issue) is that I didn't feel he gave quite enough emphasis to the political dimension of the question rather than the training dimension. Again, not that he ignores the point, I just would have made the emphasis a touch different.
Building a modern professional army is a really tough enterprise, one that involves far more than just having a bunch of men who know how to fire weapons and are willing to risk their lives. But an effective army grows from an effective state, or rather a government which commands loyalty and can exercise power. At some fundamental level, I wonder if we haven't been working this state/army calculus backwards from the beginning.
In any case, Fallows' article is one of that deserves the endlessly overused description of must-read. And the picture he paints is extremely bleak.
Less noticed has been another shorter piece in the same issue by Nir Rosen. He makes the positive case for withdrawal. Not just that things aren't going well and that we should leave, but that our best chance of securing at least some of our aims is to remove our troops.
In his effort to make his case, I have the sense that Rosen slightly overstates his case, sometimes appearing to imply that the natural center of gravity in Iraq -- absent our presence -- is one where the parties themselves would be able to work things out on their own. But the basic strategic insight to his piece sounds right -- that the extended presence of American troops in Iraq is the cause of the insurgency rather than the solution to it.
--Josh Marshall
The word I got yesterday from folks close to the Tobin case up in New Hampshire was that it didn't go all that well for the prosecution. Basically, the current team -- which has its heart in the case -- may be paying a price for laggard pursuit of the case by the original team DOJ had working the case -- which didn't. Tobin's coconspirators who copped pleas some time ago are now acting more like defense witnesses than government witnesses. Yesterday it was former New Hampshire GOP Executive Director Chuck McGee.
Nothing disastrous, mind you. Just the defense got off to a decent start.
We'll have more on the developments in the case shortly.
But for now check out blogger Betsy Devine's site. She's up in Concord covering the case from inside the courtroom.
--Josh Marshall
Was that a shoe falling? Susan Ralston is the woman who has managed to be at the center of both the Abramoff and the CIA leak investigations. She was Abramoff's executive assistant back in the day; then she took the same job with Karl Rove.
But maybe no more.
The Philippine News (Ralston is of Filipino descent) reports (link courtesy of The Plank) that she's moved on to the Commerce Department because she's been under "too much pressure" at the White House.
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT), at home in Montana: "I wouldn't know Jack Abramoff if he walked in the room."
--Josh Marshall
A TPM Reader gave me a heads-up on this a couple days ago. And it turns out he was right.
Recently I told you that any chance Tom DeLay has of regaining the Majority Leader's post was to have his case in Texas close to some resolution in January -- before dissidents in the House GOP caucus could force new leadership elections.
That seemed very likely to happen when lawmakers came back to DC mid-January.
Of course one way to give The Hammer a bit more time is just not to let members of the House come back.
And that appears to be what they've decided to do.
According to Roll Call (sub.req.), Hastert and Blunt plan to keep the doors to the people's House closed until January 31st, the day the president is scheduled to give his State of the Union address -- which of course is given in the House chamber.
--Josh Marshall
Who else did Brent Wilkes (Cunningham's sugar daddy) give money to? Ellen Miller has a list. Go check it twice.
--Josh Marshall
Duke Cunningham's booty does a perp walk!
Actually, let me make sure I'm not misunderstood. Duke may going to the big house. But his booty -- his ill-gotten gains, all the antique furniture, rugs, candelabra, the antique commode, everything -- have been seized by the IRS and placed on public display in a warehouse in San Diego.
Click here to the local TV segment of the display (look on the right of the story for the video link).
The story also notes that the stuff is going to be auctioned off to the public. So you too you could get some Duke booty.
(ed.note: Thanks to TPM Reader BS for letting us know about this new instance of Duke being on the block for the highest bidder.)
--Josh Marshall
Eh, small world, small conspiracy.
This news has been out for a few weeks and I just hadn't noticed. But the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Fund is being headed up by none other than Mel Sembler, the Cheney-fan and the big-ticket GOP fundraiser from Florida who was the US Ambassador to Italy when all the secret meetings took place and when the forged uranium papers showed up at the US Embassy in October 2002.
Since I've reported on this story for almost two years and am still writing a series on it, I need to say explicitly that I've never seen any evidence tying Sembler to any bad acts related to the forgeries. So the 'conspiracy' crack is mainly a jest. But there's a lot that's still really murky about what was happening at the US Embassy in Rome after 9/11 with the forgeries and other matters. That was on Sembler's watch. And Libby's bad acts stem from the whole forgeries bamboozlement. (Whacking Wilson was part of the larger White House effort to keep the forgeries scam covered up -- a cover up that's still underway.)
So Sembler just seems like a pretty big part of this story to be collecting money for the one person under indictment for their role in it.
--Josh Marshall
Let me follow up on the post below about those "hospitality suite[s] with several bedrooms" that arch-contracts-hustler Brent Wilkes was running around downtown Washington. I probably should have been a bit more explicit about this last evening but the wording the reporters for the Union-Tribune used was almost certainly code for some sort of legislative love shack Wilkes used to lubricate the pay-for-play operation that made him and his pals so much cash before Duke brought the whole movable feast down on their heads. It may match up with reports about fast times down at the marina on the various Dukeboats.
--Josh Marshall
I guess the folks who run the new Hotline blog just have bawdier minds than I do. Or, really, that can't be it. So I guess I was just too focused on the CIA material in yesterday's San Diego Union-Tribune piece on the relationship between Duke Cunningham and uber-contracts-grifter Brent Wilkes to notice this brief passage ...
Wilkes befriended other legislators, too. He ran a hospitality suite, with several bedrooms, in Washington – first in the Watergate Hotel and then in the Westin Grand near Capitol Hill.
Boy, that's good stuff. After all, what possible need could congressmen and senators and their staffers have for access to private hotel suites near the Capitol registered in someone else's name? What was this, the private dancer annex of Signatures?
--Josh Marshall
When I saw that Tom DeLay is now clocking in down deep in Danger Will Robinson territory -- 36% reelect -- in his own district, I was curious what Paul Begala thought about it. He grew up in DeLay's district, actually went to High School in The Hammer's hometown of Sugarland. Paul just posted his thoughts on The Hammer's fall, with a little hometown perspective, over at TPMCafe.
--Josh Marshall
That is an unfortunate number for Mr. DeLay. According to Gallup, his reelect number in his own district -- Texas 22nd -- is down to 36%.
49% says they're more likely to vote for the Democratic challenger.
52% of DeLay's constituents have an 'unfavorable' impression of him.
Those numbers aren't insurmountable for a pol more than willing to go thermonuclear on anyone who runs against him. But they ain't good. Not good at all.
--Josh Marshall
Does the Duke Cunningham opera buffa have a tie to the CIA?
I'm not quite sure what to make of this. But let's run through it.
As you know, co-conspirator #1 in the Duke case is Mr. Brent Wilkes of San Diego. Wilkes is commonly referred to as a 'defense contractor'. His real line of work, though, seems a bit different. Wilkes' specialized in finding companies or products for which the DoD had little or no use and then lathering up a few members of Congress so they'd force the Pentagon to buy his junk.
Wilkes even rented a share of a private jet pretty much for the sole purpose of flying Duke and Tom DeLay and a few other Reps. around the country.
Good work if you can get it; and Wilkes got a lot of it.
But this piece in yesterday's San Diego Union-Tribune -- not exactly a liberal paper, though they contributed as much as any media outlet to Duke's undoing -- notes that Wilkes, who seems to be an inveterate schemer is the long-time, close personal friend of a guy named Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo. And he turns out to be the number three man today at the CIA, specifically, the Agency's Executive Director.
When former Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL) became CIA Director last year he promoted a bunch of new people. And Foggo was one of them.
In an article from a year ago Walter Pincus (in which Foggo is referred to only by his nickname because he had not yet gone 'public') wrote that ...
Three retired officials noted that Dusty had maintained a close relationship in recent years with several Republican staff members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence whom Goss, the panel's former chairman, has brought to the agency as his top assistants.Dusty is also a critic of a controversial new pay-for-performance compensation reform plan that was put together by A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, who served as executive director under former CIA director George J. Tenet.
Now, I know we're juggling serveral balls here. But, remember, House Intel is a committee Duke sits on and it's where Duke got a lot of the juice that made him so valuable to the defense/intel contractors like Wilkes and Mitch Wade that owned him.
So, you know, small world.
But then I saw this piece in Government Executive magazine by meddlesome investigative reporter (and I mean that in the best Scooby Doo sense of the word) Jason Vest, which begins ...
Federal investigators in San Diego have made it clear that while just-resigned Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham pled guilty last week to taking bribes from defense contractors, their public corruption probe will not stop at Cunningham. Numerous current and retired CIA officials say they will not be surprised if the investigation touches the CIA in general, and its third-ranking official in particular.
Vest says that Foggo is also tight with Duke's other pal, Mitchell Wade.
This may bear watching.
Late Update: Turns out Laura Rozen was on to the Wilkes-Foggo connection last week. See her post here.
--Josh Marshall
Just to give a bit of context to the DeLay news below, quite a lot depends on how soon he can get his trial scheduled. To save his career, DeLay doesn't just need to beat this charge, he has to beat it quickly -- almost certainly by the end of next month or very soon after.
That's because in January there are probably going to be leadership elections in the House GOP caucus forced ahead by rebels who want to close the book on the DeLay era.
For the moment, Rep. Blunt (R-MO) is basically keeping the Majority Leader's seat warm for DeLay. If DeLay could get cleared and back in charge quickly he could possibly hold on. If it goes past a certain point, though, he's damaged goods and he'd unable to win back his post even if he were cleared of all charges later in the year.
So can DeLay get to trial anywhere near that quickly?
It's hard for me to see how. The clearest indication I could find was in the Houston Chronicle which said today that the judge in the case "told DeLay's lawyers last month that if he upheld either of the indictments, he would be unable to hold a trial for DeLay before early next year."
That sounds to me like a pretty tight squeeze. And I suspect it means that DeLay is finished. A small symbolic victory in getting the one indictment tossed. But not enough to survive.
--Josh Marshall
Split decision for DeLay -- Judge throws out conspiracy charge, but tells the BugMan he must stand trial for money-laundering.
(ed.note: Thanks to TPM Reader TF for keeping us posted.)
--Josh Marshall
If you unwrap the Duke Cunningham story and peel back how each of the different players came together, a lot of it comes down to one guy: San Diego defense contractor Brent Wilkes (aka co-conspirator #1). Today the San Diego Union-Tribune has a profile of him, his long history with Duke and fellow San Diego Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA).
--Josh Marshall
Money talks; wireless screams.
From the Post ...
Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday.According to the officials, the head of BellSouth's Louisiana operations, Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert, who oversees the roughly 1,650-member police force.
City officials said BellSouth was upset about the plan to bring high-speed Internet access for free to homes and businesses to help stimulate resettlement and relocation to the devastated city. Around the country, large telephone companies have aggressively lobbied against localities launching their own Internet networks, arguing that they amount to taxpayer-funded competition. Some states have laws prohibiting them.
Monopolies of the New Gilded Age.
--Josh Marshall
If majority US public opinion still clusters around the political center, why have US politics moved so hard to the right? That's the subject we're discussing this week at TPMCafe Book Club as we discuss Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. Also joining us for the discussion will be Mark Schmitt, Ruy Teixeira, and Matt Yglesias.
--Josh Marshall
Neil Bush traveling through Asia with Rev. Moon to raise money for an underwater tunnel between Russia and Alaska.
--Josh Marshall
Fearless Leader Watch.
From Bloomberg via TaxProf ...
President George W. Bush will delay a major push for revamping the tax code because administration officials concluded the changes are too tough to sell to the public and lawmakers, two people familiar with the matter said.Bush instead will spend next year attempting to lay the political groundwork for fundamental changes in 2007 or 2008, the people said, and leave to Congress the task of tackling incremental tax code simplification in 2006, an election year.
The administration is wary of seeing its push to overhaul the tax system fall prey to the same factors that derailed Bush's attempt to restructure the Social Security system this year to include private investment accounts ...
What is the president's agenda these days exactly?
--Josh Marshall
Government transparency. What a concept.
A key slice out of a piece in tomorrow's Times ...
These candid exchanges are just a few of the glimpses inside Louisiana's highest leadership that emerged late Friday in an extraordinary release of about 100,000 pages of state documents detailing the response to Hurricane Katrina by Ms. Blanco and her staff. The state compiled the documents - including e-mail messages, hand-written notes, correspondence with the White House, and thousands of offers of assistance and desperate pleas for help - at the request of two Congressional committees looking into the state's preparedness and response."As we move forward, I believe the public deserves a full accounting of the response at all levels of government to the largest natural disaster in U.S. history," Ms. Blanco said in a statement about the release of the documents.
...
She said the documents demonstrated "hard-working, sleep-deprived public servants operating under enormous pressure and rapidly changing circumstances." They also show that as Hurricane Katrina approached and inundated New Orleans, Ms. Blanco's top aides realized how quickly it was becoming both a human and a political nightmare.
"This is absolutely the worst-case situation we have long feared," Andy Kopplin, the governor's chief of staff, wrote in an e-mail message to the Blanco administration's top aides the day before the storm hit New Orleans. "Pray for Louisiana citizens as this storm nears."
The correspondence released on Friday apparently received almost no editing, other than the blacking out of certain names and telephone numbers for people not associated with the state government. It includes handwritten notes, audio recordings of conference calls and even a few doodles on legal pads.
Is anything like this even remotely imaginable at the federal level today?
--Josh Marshall
