As the AP and others reported yesterday, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) released some telling emails and 
challenged Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to explain why he was involved in pulling strings to land Carnival Cruise Lines an emergency contract to house Katrina evacuees.
But Jebâs not the only one who needs to answer some questions. Last fall, Carnival veep Terry Thornton testified before Congress that his company didn’t seek a government contract. Rather, the government came to Carnival. But that story doesn’t stand up, now that we know Carnival worked its GOP political connections behind the scenes to get a deal.
Here’s Carnival’s version: The Health and Human Services Department first asked the cruise company on Aug. 31 if it could use its ships for Katrina relief efforts, Thornton testified. âThis was our first contact with the government with respect to the vessels,â he told the House Government Affairs Committee.
“You didn’t seek the government contract. The government came to you, basically, with a solicitation,” Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.), asked Thornton.
“That’s correct,” Thornton replied.
Apparently, Mr. Thornton, it’s not.
Three down, more to come in the New Hampshire phone jamming case.
According to a piece that ran in today’s New Hampshire Union Leader (the piece isn’t available online), prosecutors there have said that another indictment is forthcoming in “about four weeks.” No word yet on who the lucky contestant is.
We’ll keep you posted.
Great moments in corruption, courtesy of the United States Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of California.
On at least six different occasions, Duke Cunningham personally contacted Defense officials to demand that his favorite defense contractors, Brent Wilkes and Mitchell Wade, got their money.
A sampling of those and other high points from the prosecutors’ latest:
7/6/99 – Brent Wilkes faxes a set of “Talking Points” to Duke so that he can competently champion Wilkes’ cause.
1999 – A Defense official, in the course of reviewing a number of invoices from Wilkes’ company, determines that $750,000 of them are fraudulent. The official calls Wilkes and tells him the DoD is not paying. Soon after, the official receives a call from Duke, demanding to know why Wilkes’ isn’t getting paid. The official explains. Duke hangs up on him.
Duke calls the official’s supervisor to complain.
1999 – A Defense official gets what he/she thinks to be an over-inflated invoice from Brent Wilkes’ company. Wilkes tries to plead with the official, saying that “he needed the money to make a balloon payment or he would lose his company.” The official is “unmoved.”
Cunningham calls three separate times to demand payment to Wilkes. Wilkes then meets again with the official, has Cunningham call his cell phone, then passes the phone to the official to explain again why Wilkes isn’t getting his money.
2001 – A Defense official moves $2-3M away from a $10M appropriation for Brent Wilkes’ ADCS. Wilkes complains to Duke, who summons the defense official to a meeting. He berates the official; the official doesn’t budge. Duke subsequently contacts the official’s supervisor and demands that he/she be fired for not being a “team player.”
9/27/02 – Duke Cunningham’s frightened staffers email back and forth, anticipating the return of the “big chinchilla” after he’s found out that his beloved defense contractor’s programs have been cut. “I’m under my desk ducking and covering” says one.
Minutes later, he returns: “He stormed into his office, pissed, and said he might as well become a Democrat.”
Helluva job! No really!
The Hattiesburg American reports that The Feds are prosecuting Forrest County, Mississippi Sheriff Billy McGee for commandeering two FEMA ice trucks and giving their contents to locals in the midst of the Katrina disaster, when FEMA was too bolloxed up to order it themselves.
A National Guard trooper tried to stop McGee; the sheriff handcuffed him. Perhaps that was a bit of an over-reaction. But, as one fire chief told the paper, “We had diabetic people who hadn’t been able to put their insulin on ice for three days.”
Who would you want serving your community after its next disaster, McGee or the guardsman?
(ed note: Special thanks to TPM Reader CG for the tip.)
Blogads is running their annual reader survey. Taking a few moments to fill out the survey gives advertisers information about blog readers. And that helps keep sites like TPM and most of your other favorite blogs on the web. On question #23 put ‘Talking Points Memo’ as the blog that sent you to the survey.
Golf and corruption brought Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) this far; it’s a winning combination and he’s sticking with it.
OK, so he took a golf junket to Scotland with an admitted felon lobbyist, as part of an alleged quid pro quo with an Indian tribe that the lobbyist was screwing out of millions of dollars.
Is that going to stop him from loving golf?!
Apparently not. His campaign is handing out these customized Bob Ney tees out on the campaign trail. That’s bold.
(Photo courtesy of the Buckeye State Blog.)
We called Ney’s campaign for comment. His congressional spokesman, Brian Walsh, called us back and confirmed the tees were real. “I think a few were handed out last night,” he said. “I saw it up on some liberal blogs and I think the fact that some bored democrats are making hay out of this is one of the silliest things Iâve ever seen.”
Oh, videotape is not the friend of George W. Bush today.
Remember this quote, right?
“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did appreciate a serious storm but these levees got breached and as a result much of New Orleans is flooded and now we’re having to deal with it and will.” – George W. Bush, Sept. 1, 2005
Only now the AP has unearthed videotape of the president being warned that just that could happen the day before Katrina hit.
Chris Matthews ran the tape just a few minutes ago on Hardball.
See the report on it here.
Late Update: video link here.
Even Later Update: Click here for the link to the White House photo of the August 28th briefing.
Travis County DA Ronnie Earle is continuing to chase down Tom DeLay’s ties to Jack Abramoff.
Today he subpoenaed Jack Abramoff’s travel agent, the one who arranged the junket to Scotland in 2000. DeLay came along, and I think that it’s fair to say from the $6,617.20 ticket price that he flew first class. The ticket was charged to Jack Abramoff’s credit card. You can see his AmEx statement here.
Late Update: TPM Reader ME writes in to confirm that the “J3” code on the ticket refers to Continental’s “Business First.”
Sarasota Herald-Tribune columnist says Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) lied to him about her contacts with Mitchell Wade.
Mark your calendars…
Duke Cunningham will be sentenced this Friday, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office down in Florida tells us that the sentencing of Adam Kidan and Jack Abramoff for their SunCruz fraud is coming up March 16th.