Totalling Mrs. Doolittle’s Take

As we’ve noted here many times, Rep. John Doolittle‘s (R-CA) wife has had an uncanny ability to pick up business from sketchy lobbyists (one a felon, the other a probable future one) — and her husband’s political committees. More information came out yesterday in the McCain report, so now’s a good time to give another rundown.

How do the Doolittles bag easy money? Let us count the ways.

— As revealed in the report yesterday, Jack Abramoff paid Julie Doolittle $66,000 for work from August 2002 to March 2004. Most of that work was for planning a fundraiser for Abramoff’s Capital Athletic Foundation, the Spy Game Gala that was to be MC’ed by Tony Snow. The event never came off because it coincided with the launching of the Iraq War in March, 2003.

But why, you ask, did Julie Doolittle remain on the payroll for almost a year after the event was cancelled? She also did some work for Abramoff’s restaurant Signatures, but according to her attorney, she “primarily performed public relations and other event planning services for the Spy Museum event.” So what was all that money for?

As revealed yesterday, Doolittle was indirectly paid by Abramoff’s client the Agua Caliente tribe of California, an arrangement she apparently didn’t know about.

— At the same time that Julie Doolittle was working for Abramoff, she was working for Abramoff’s corrupt lobbying pal Ed Buckham, doing bookkeeping for his nonprofit U.S. Korea-Exchange Council. She was there — actually keeping an office in Buckham’s lobbying firm, Alexander Strategy Group — as early as 2002 until as late as May of 2005 (Roll Call, 3/21/05). It’s not yet known how much she took home from that.

— And then there’s the brisk business she’s done, pulling in a 15% cut of political contributions to the political committees of her virtually unchallenged (prior to this year’s race, anyway) husband. She’s taken home “$180,000 in commissions from her husband’s political fundraising since late 2001.”

Exhausting, isn’t it? And these are the only clients of Julie Doolittle that we know about. Doolittle’s spokesman has claimed that she had other clients, but wouldn’t say who they were “out of respect for the privacy of the clients.”