Alleged Duke Briber: It Wasn’t Bribery — It Was ExtortionI’ve had a couple days to digest the New York Times‘ lengthy article on congressional corruption, based largely on an unprecedented on-the-record interview with a man who has been identified as a major briber of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham.
It isn’t the tell-all I’d like it to be. But the things Brent Wilkes didn’t want to talk about are nearly as telling as those he discussed freely.
Wilkes, readers will recall, is the guy who is said to have thrown power-broker poker parties in the Watergate Hotel and elsewhere, some of which were said to feature congressmen and prostititutes. He was the man who’s said to have trained Mitchell Wade in the art of the dirty deal — Wade, of course, is the other identified Duke briber, and has been cooperating with prosecutors for months.
The piece, already notable for its revelations, becomes moreso when one notices it contains barely a passing mention of Cunningham, Wade, or the phantom prostitutes (none have yet been publicly identified).
Instead, Wilkes focuses the paper’s attention on Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), now the powerful chair of the House Appropriations Committee, and Bill Lowery, the lawmaker-turned-lobbyist who, as a “gatekeeper” to Lewis and his earmark factory, supposedly kept the federal dollars flowing to a dozen Wilkes-run firms.
“I played by their rules,” the Times quotes Wilkes as saying of Lewis and Lowery, “and I played to win.”
In his comments to the Times, Wilkes paints the impression that Lowery, along with Lewis and other appropriators, worked an extortion racket: they forced businesspeople like Wilkes to pay campaign contributions and lobbying fees in exchange for the contracts.
His lawyer, Nancy Luque, is quoted saying that “prosecutors should be looking at the entire [appropriations] committee,” not just Duke.
That seems to be the framework for his defense — one he appears likely to deploy sooner rather than later, since a grand jury is reportedly in the process of weighing evidence and deciding whether to indict him. Unfortunately, it skirts several key areas: first, his arrangements with Duke (which Cunningham calls a bribe, but which Wilkes didn’t talk about); second, his supposed use of prostitutes as favors for Duke and possibly others (Wilkes’ lawyers have, in the past, flatly denied these allegations, but in the Times Wilkes is strangely silent on the topic); and third, the extent — and legality — of his involvements with Mitchell Wade.
Why did Wilkes talk now? And why did he point the finger at Lewis and Lowery? It’s not clear. Perhaps he was trying out a defense. Perhaps he was upset at what he has perceived to be a lack of support from the two men during these last months, as federal prosecutors and the press have climbed all over Wilkes and his dealings like a kindergarten class on a substitute teacher. Maybe he was feeling frustrated at the slow-mounting pressure of the federal inquiry, and thought this was a way to get his story out.
For the moment, anyway it’s a little hard to find out: Wilkes doesn’t take phone calls, and his lawyer, Nancy Luque, is on vacation until mid-August.
