More Trouble for Gibbons

The Wall Street Journal continues (sub. req.) to make life miserable for Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons. The paper first reported a month ago that Gibbons was under federal investigation for improper gifts (possible bribes) from a defense contractor.

Now the paper reports that Gibbons’ business as a legislator was intertwined with a second defense contractor:

The wife of Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons was hired as a consultant to a defense contractor at the same time that her husband, who was then a member of Congress, helped the company get funding for a no-bid federal contract.

Dawn Gibbons got about $35,000 in consulting fees in 2004 from Sierra Nevada Corp., of Sparks, Nev., the company said. Mr. Gibbons, a five-term Republican who served on the armed services and intelligence committees, sought funding that year for Sierra Nevada for a $4 million contract to develop a helicopter radar-landing system.

If this seems like déjà vu, it’s because the role of wives has been key in the Jack Abramoff investigation. Abramoff often selected lawmakers’ and staffers’ wives for busy work — one former staffer, Tony Rudy, has pled guilty for accepting bribes from Abramoff in the form of consulting work for his wife.

There are more than shades of similarity here. Gibbons has the same defense lawyer as Abramoff: Abbe Lowell. And Lowell tells the Journal that Mrs. Gibbons “had a pre-existing relationship” with the contractor that began long before Mr. Gibbons was elected to Congress and had “no knowledge” of the federal contract. Just a coincidence.

Now, there’s another major revelation in the Journal story, one that touches on the U.S. attorney scandal. John Wilke reports that “a federal grand jury in Washington has begun to issue subpoenas for documents, according to witnesses contacted in recent weeks.”

A lot of the suspicion over U.S. Attorney for Nevada Daniel Bogden’s firing has centered on the assumption that it was his office leading the investigation against Gibbons. Not the case, reports Wilke: “Mr. Bogden wasn’t involved in the Gibbons probe, which was initiated by prosecutors in Washington.”