There were rumblings last night that a new indictment had been handed down in the Alaska corruption probe. The Anchorage paper is now reporting that a new case is on file in federal court, titled USA v. John Cowdery. Cowdery is a Republican state senator from Anchorage. But that’s all the information they have so far. Nothing that links it yet to the Veco probe that has snared Sen. Ted Stevens.
Late Update: We just obtained the indictment, which alleges that Cowdery was part of a conspiracy to bribe another state senator. It appears to be all part of the sprawling Veco probe. We’ll be posting the indictment shortly at TPMmuckraker.
Later Update: From the DOJ press release announcing the indictment:
The indictment alleges that Cowdery and his co-conspirators, including Bill J. Allen, the former chief executive officer of VECO Corporation, and Richard L. Smith, VECO’s former vice president, corruptly offered and agreed to give financial benefits to another state legislator (State Senator A) to influence and reward State Senator A in exchange for State Senator A agreeing to perform official acts as a member of the Alaska State Legislature.
The indictment specifically alleges that VECO Corporation, which at the time was a multinational oil services corporation, had a significant financial interest in contracts with oil producers in Alaska and, consequently, supported certain oil and gas legislation pending in the Alaska state legislature in 2006. The indictment further alleges that, in exchange for $25,000 – characterized as political campaign contributions – Cowdery, Allen, Smith and others sought an agreement with State Senator A that would require State Senator A to vote in favor of the oil and gas legislation favored by VECO. Cowdery and the alleged co-conspirators agreed to this plan, according to the indictment, through a series of telephone calls and in-person meetings.
Latest Update: You can read the indictment here.
Greg Sargent notes at TPM Election Central that more than one McCain surrogate in recent days — heavy hitters like Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney — has questioned not just Obama’s patriotism but his very American-ness.
The McCain camp is declining to disavow those remarks — pointing instead to a recent comment by McCain saying that he doesn’t question Obama’s patriotism.
McCain declares that his campaign’s national co-chair and chief economics adviser, Phil “Mental Recession” Gramm, doesn’t speak for him:
Late Update: TPM Reader DV, with some trenchant questions:
I’m not even sure I know what it means to say you don’t agree with your chief economic advisor’s comments about the economy. If he is McCain’s chief economic advisor, what good is he?
Yeah, I know McCain isn’t obliged to take all of his advice but on something as critical as the state of the US economy wouldn’t you think he’s advising McCain on what the problems and solutions are?
So if he hasn’t told McCain he thinks the economic problems are all in our head what has he told him? If a candidates chief adviser differs so much from the candidate what value is he to McCain?
Obama today riffing off of Phil Gramm’s comments:
McCain campaign finally getting on top of the viral video trend? According to Jake Tapper, the McCain campaign is so spooked by Sen. Gramm’s comments about the ‘mental recession’ that they’re pushing a Youtube video of McCain bashing Gramm, his own chief economics advisor.
We’ve been following with some interest what seems, based on reader reports and other reporting, to have been a sort of stealth early TV ad campaign by the McCain campaign in key states in recent weeks.
On a conference call with reporters this afternoon, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said that the McCain campaign has outspent the Obama campaign 3-to-1 on TV ads in the last two months.
Now, there may be some self-interest in the McCain camp saying this. The Obama camp declined to comment. We’re still looking into, but thought that was a data point worth sharing.
It’s been a slow burn up until now but it seems like the McCain surrogates are finally starting to pick up steam in their efforts to brand Barack Obama as un-American. We take a closer look in today’s episode of TPMtv …
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
Bob Schaffer, the Republican senate candidate in Colorado, helped broker a oil deal in Iraqi Kurdistan that the State Department said threatened the security of Iraq.
I’ve been wondering about this for weeks — especially since the May fundraising totals came out, which showed McCain and Obama roughly even for that month. Just how much money has Barack Obama been raising since the end of the primaries? After all, if he’s going to bring in these astronomical sums everyone’s talking about there aren’t that many months left. He’s got to start putting up some big, big monthly totals.
This piece in tomorrow’s Post suggests that the strain of raising money to retire Clinton’s debt and some continuing resistance from Clinton’s donors (to give to Obama’s campaign) has put the Obama machine under some pressure.
We don’t know Obama’s totals. And obviously having difficulties, if that’s what’s happening, has to be understood in the context of the massive totals they’re planning on bringing in.
But one thing that has occurred to me recently is the very different tempo of small donor fundraising, or at least the sense of it I get watching from my vantage point. There are established networks for big dollar giving. It has a bit more of a command and control quality. But small dollar giving seems highly dependent on the intensity of the moment and the spikes of the campaign cycle. During the heat of the Obama-Clinton battle, giving money was one of the most direct ways supporters around the country could participate in the fight — except when the campaign trundled into their states. And that applies to both campaigns since, by any standard other than up against Obama, Clinton’s 2008 monthly numbers were astounding too.
All time is precious in a general election cycle. But in relative terms we’re in a bit of a downtime now, a lull. People may support Obama every bit as much as they did in February. But my feel of the situation is that people are taking a bit of a breather. And that may not change until the conventions, which are still almost two months off.
Perhaps too, when you hear that Obama’s going to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, that the sense of participation you get from sending in your $25 isn’t quite as great.
I should make explicitly clear that I’ve made no real study of the small donor giving. These are more questions and impressions I have from my perch running TPM. But I wonder if this isn’t a limitation of the small-donor model that has not been sufficiently appreciated.