Former defense contractor and current convicted criminal Mitchell Wade spent $2,800 on a dinner with Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) and offered to throw a campaign fundraiser for her as he was attempting to gain her support for $10 million in federal money, according to the Orlando Sentinel. House rules prohibit members from accepting any gift or meal worth more than $50 from corporate officials or lobbyists. Harris also received $32,000 in illegal campaign contributions from Wade. Harris’ explanation for the dinner has been less than satisfactory:

In her interview Wednesday, Harris acknowledged for the first time that Wade had paid for the dinner at Citronelle, reversing a statement from her congressional spokeswoman earlier this year.

But in the interview, Harris also said her campaign had, at some point, “reimbursed” the restaurant.

When asked how she could have reimbursed a business that was owed no money — Wade paid the bill that evening — she abruptly ended the interview and walked off.

Her spokesman called back an hour later and asked a reporter not to publish anything Harris had said Wednesday night about the dinner.

On Thursday, Harris’ campaign released a two-paragraph statement that differed from her explanation a day earlier. It stated that Harris thought her “campaign would be reimbursing” her share of the meal but later found out that hadn’t happened.

To resolve any questions, the statement said, “I have donated to a local Florida charity $100 which will more than adequately compensate for the cost of my beverage and appetizer.”

The meal was so expensive because Mitchell Wade’s favorite wine happens to be a $1,000 bottle of French bordeaux. Harris clearly should not have let Wade open that wine as Massie Ritsch of the Center for Responsive Politics put it: “Once the Bordeaux is out of the bottle … you can’t put it back.” And finally, the key sentence to take away from the story: “The Department of Justice would not discuss the details of that night.”

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The Washington Post provides the story behind the rise and fall of Mitchell Wade, the defense contractor convicted of bribing ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham and defense department officials, and passing along illegal donations to two other lawmakers. Wade, who learned the intricacies of the procurement process from working as a civilian worker at the Pentagon and as an apprentice to Brent Wilkes, another contractor implicated in the Cunningham bribery, took existing practices and pushed them to the limit to become a contracting powerhouse. Wade “aggressively used the ‘revolving door’ between the government’s defense and intelligence bureaucracy and the private industry,” hiring “top talent” and “freely distributed title and rank, appointing more than 100 vice presidents, executive vice presidents and ‘senior executive vice presidents’” while paying higher wages than any other defense contractor would offer for officials with security clearances. Wade found the global war on terrorism good for business as a Knight Ridder report shows that the Pentagon hired his MZM to “collect data on houses of worship, schools, power plants and other locations in the United States.”

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A defense contractor’s use of ‘straw’ donors for political contributions has “raised new questions” about two lawmakers, Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) and Rep. Katharine Harris (R-FL), and “the tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions he steered to the two GOP lawmakers.” According to Roll Call, Mitchell Wade, guilty of bribing former Rep. Duke Cunningham and violating federal election laws, “funneled $78,000 in illegal campaign donations from 2003 to 2005 to Goode and Harris through 39 “straw” donors, all of whom were MZM employees or their spouses.” The Justice Department document states that neither Harris nor Goode knew that the contributions were illegal and both have denied wrongdoing. However, Goode, a recipient of $90,000 from Wade and MZM, wrote an earmark that secured “$3.6 million in federal defense funds that went to MZM for a facility in Martinsville, Va., and he was also instrumental in securing $500,000 in state grants to purchase the site.”

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Mitchell Wade, the head of the Washington firm MZM, Inc., pleaded guilty “to his role in lavishing more than $1 million in gifts on a California congressman,” according to the Associated Press. That congressman, Duke Cunningham, resigned from Congress after pleading guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from Wade and the San Diego defense contractor Brent Wilkes. Wade’s bribes to Cunningham included purchasing the congressman’s house at a price inflated by $700,000 and buying him a $140,000 yacht, nicknamed the ‘Dukestir’. Wilkes and the other co-conspirators – Thomas Kontogiannis and John T. Michael – have yet to plead in the case.

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