One of the key details behind the prosecution of the Duke Cunningham case was that Mitch Wade went straight to the authorities on like Day One of the scandal. I’d need to go back to my reporting notes to get the exact timeline. But basically from the moment it was clear that Duke had some serious explaining to do, Wade was there at the US Attorneys office, ‘fessing up and asking what he could do to help.
That’s got to be the best practices approach to how to come out of one of these scandals without spending a good chunk of the rest of your life in prison. But I’d say he did about as well from this sentence as you could possibly imagine. Wade flagrantly and repeatedly bribed a sitting member of Congress and he’s going to do 2.5 years in prison.
