We’re continuing to dig into the Alcee Hastings story. And, man, it’s a pretty damn colorful story. The best thumbnail I can give you at this point is that the evidence against Hastings on a couple of key counts seems pretty bad. But probably his best defense is that there were at least two corrupt FBI agents involved in investigating him. One of them was actually H. Paul Rico, the now-notorious and now-dead FBI agent who was the ‘handler’ for Boston mobtser James “Whitey” Bulger of the ‘Winter Hill gang’ and ended up helping Whitey arrange mob murders. (I guess you could say he got in a bit too deep.)
Muckraker will be bringing you a run-down of all the muck later today.
But in general, yeah, you could say it’s a rather colorful case. And if the standard is criminal guilt I think there’s a decent argument that the case against Hastings is fatally compromised. But that’s not the standard. This isn’t even about a preponderance of evidence standard. The issue is which Democrat gets to be the senior Democrat in the House on intel issues.
I think it’s a given that that person should be ethically beyond reproach, certainly in the sense of being someone deemed incorruptible. And I’m just not sure that word applies to Alcee Hastings.
Think of it this way: when they whack a decorated war hero as lying traitor, a triple amputee vet as a coward and an ex-Navy Secretary novelist as a pornographer, what do figure we hear when evidence of bribery and leaking classified wiretap info about the Dems’ House intel chief hit Fox News and Drudge?
