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The Sunlight Foundation Blog
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More Members and Candidates Under Investigation
Since the beginning of the 2005 Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham investigations the Justice Department has seen a beefed up Public Integrity Unit dig into a series of scandals involving congressmen, lobbyists, and other public officials. Roll Call reports today that the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission are pursuing a new rack of investigations into the improper use of campaign funds by a number of campaigns. Thanks to the ever growing amount of money pouring into campaigns this cycle the Justice Department and the FEC are finding embezzlement, theft, and improper payments to be at an all-time high:
In an interview with Roll Call on Monday, Mason elaborated on his statements last week, indicating that half of the agency’s 10 embezzlement cases involve candidate committees, while three involve political action committees and two are political party cases. Of the five candidate committees, he said three belong to first-time candidates. The FEC investigations more than likely involve staffers or volunteers who appear to have stolen money from the campaigns.
In the majority of cases, Mason said, campaign graft is typically reported first to local police departments. He attributed the explosion in embezzlement-related cases to the increased exposure campaigns face in billion-dollar election cycles. Fatigued volunteers with too much access, he said, often plague candidate committees, which frequently impose little oversight of their accounting records.
Two of the investigations of campaign committees stem from spending decisions made in last year’s election cycle:
Donsanto declined this week to discuss the statements he made at the legal seminar last Friday, but recent findings by the FEC — combined with increased cooperation between the elections agency and the Justice Department — suggests that federal law enforcement may be thumbing through recently completed audits of Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and former Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.). Since the summer of 2006, FEC auditors have determined that both lawmakers used campaign money for personal expenses.
In Pombo’s case, FEC auditors found that in 2003, Annette Pombo, the lawmaker’s wife, issued checks to herself for $58,623 for salary and expense reimbursements. The report said that roughly a third of the payments “appeared … to represent the personal use of campaign funds.”
Pombo, who said Tuesday that he has not been contacted by the Justice Department, said his campaign never was able to fully account for about $11,000 of the money and had to amend campaign and tax records to show the money as unclaimed income.
“There were either insufficient receipts or no receipts,” Pombo said. “I couldn’t provide a receipt for computer equipment for the campaign or stuff like that.”
The FEC’s audit of Meeks’ campaign found that his campaign misspent more than $15,000 on health club charges and transportation reimbursements during the 2004 election cycle.
According to the agency’s audit report issued August 2006, Meeks’ campaign acknowledged “expenses totaling $7,146 were mistakenly paid for by [Meeks for Congress] and would be reimbursed by the candidate.”
The audit report of Meeks’ campaign shows that he spent $6,230 on a personal trainer, who charged $45 per hour. Meeks’ campaign told the commission “that the personal trainer was necessary to alleviate stress brought on by the candidate’s duties.”
Federal law states that candidates may not pay for “dues, fees and other payments to a health club or recreational facility” out of their campaign accounts.
The emphasis added to the above passage is there to highlight a specific statement made by Meeks’ campaign, that Meeks needed to hire a personal trainer to "alleviate stress brought on by the candidate’s duties." You’d have to be in a pretty tough campaign if you needed a personal trainer to "alleviate stress," right? Wrong. Rep. Meeks didn’t have an opponent in 2006. Rep. Meeks didn’t have a real opponent in 2004 or 2002 either. So, I’m not buying campaign induced stress as a reason to hire a personal trainer. Though this doesn’t matter because even if he was involved in a campaign at all, which he wasn’t, this would still be against the law. Oops.
If the Justice Department is starting to discuss these investigations we’re bound to find out who the other candidates are soon enough.
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Fishy Behavior Catches Ted Stevens No Trouble on Capitol Hill
Quick addition: USA Today reached the same opinion of Stevens today as well.
According to public records and officials in Alaska, The Hill reports that Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) "has quietly steered millions of federal dollars to a sportfishing industry group founded by Bob Penney, a longtime friend who helped the Alaska Republican profit from a lucrative land deal." While the FBI, and possibly a jury, will decide if Stevens has abused his official position it is clear enough that the senior Senator has acted in a manner that is unethical for a United States Senator and a powerful committee chairman (yesterday I wrote that Stevens is the Appropriations ranking member, he is actually ranking member on the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, the second ranking member on Appropriations, and the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member).
Despite the mounting evidence against Stevens he continues to have the support of the Republican leadership and has not been stripped of his committee assignments. Sen. Larry Craig was stripped of his committee assignments and forced to resign (although he is now reconsidering) because he engaged in potentially lewd conduct that was not of the party sanctioned variety. What is more important, sexual, or potentially sexual, behavior or the betrayal of trust and abuse of official, elected positions to gain money and aid your rich buddies? I’ve seen this scale before and I know which way it should be tilting.
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Ethics v. Prudery
Over the past week or two I’ve learned two things: do not tap your foot in the bathroom and that prudery is more prevalent on Capitol Hill than a true ethical fiber. Apparently it is more worrying that a Senator may be a deeply closeted gay man than it is that another Senator is deeply tied into a massive FBI-led corruption investigation or that a senior congressman is being investigated for perhaps the shadiest earmark ever. I read this article by Norm Ornstein today and couldn’t agree more with what he has to say. With so many corruption scandals, not just tawdry sex scandals, “Who believes that the ethics committee will act proactively to investigate allegedly scandalous behavior before stories garner headlines or result in announcements by prosecutors that Senators are targets or subjects of investigations?”
Of course, neither ethics committee actually does any investigating of ethics unless pushed by other members and even then it is unclear what can push an investigation to become meaningful. The one case, of all the cases that actually involve impropriety in the official actions of a Member, immediately referred to the Senate Ethics Committee was the case of Sen. Larry Craig. Personally, I can’t think of a single thing that Craig has done in violation of Senate Rules and therefore I don’t know why this case, as opposed to bribery investigations, is being referred to the Ethics Committee; although I can guess.
Sexual prudery rules on Capitol Hill, while true ethical misconduct goes unnoticed. Craig had his committee seats stripped within days after he was caught tapping his foot in a men’s bathroom. Sen. Stevens, under investigation for accepting bribes from
From Fanne Fox to Larry Craig, Capitol Hill has been equally appalled and enthralled by political sex scandals. Maybe it’s time they get their priorities straight and focus on the real unethical muck going on behind doors in Congress and not bathroom doors in Minneapolis. It’s time for congressmen to stop pointing their noses up and instead point them down into some papers and get to investigating the actual problems in their own house.
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Ted Stevens Threatens to Block Ethics Bill
What happens when you combine the last two posts by Bill and myself? You get a story like this one from John Bresnahan at the Politico:
"Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, whose home back in Alaska was raided by federal investigators Monday in a wide-ranging corruption investigation, has threatened to place a hold on the Democratic-drafted ethics legislation just passed by the House and expected on the Senate floor by week’s end.
The senator told a closed session of fellow Republicans today, including Vice President Dick Cheney, that he was upset that the measure would interfere with his travel to and from Alaska – and vowed to block it."
Sen. Stevens' is apparently upset that lobbyists will no longer be able to freely ferrett him from Washington to Alaska. He is concerned that he may have to use some of those millions of dollars which he obtained with Bob Penney and Bill Allen to actually – gasp – pay for his own travel.
Sen. Stevens could always just stay in Alaska.
