Skepticseye.com

The happy folks at FECInfo tipped me today to the release of more documents in MUR 5628, a sua sponte matter submitted to the FEC when executives discovered that the company had been reimbursing federal contributions made by employees. Oops.

Notes FECInfo:

The documents also include statements that an advisor from the tax practice of the public accounting firm known as KPMG discussed the expense report reimbursements and indicated that political contributions were not deductible business expenses and suggested that the company should provide bonuses to those employees making political contributions.

Maybe the KPMG people should quite reading the papers, since if you relied on the Post you might have the impression that corporations were making contributions to federal candidates even now.

Charges against one Delay aide in Texas have been dismissed. (HT Ed Still at Votelaw).

U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel said the losing Democrats, Kirk Watson and Mike Head, “failed to allege any facts that Colyandro intentionally or even knowingly violated the applicable sections of the Texas Election Code.”

This is a separate case from the “money laundering” matter, so who knows what effect this decision might have there. It would certainly help with the atmospherics, if nothing else. It appears to me that both cases get at what individuals believed about the scope of Texas law and how it affected corporate contribution activity (you know, “intent” or what was known in law school as “mens rea” What - no women’s rea?), so maybe this works in the favor of the Delay defendants.

The Kansas City Star reports that Adam Taff, an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination in 2004 in Kansas’s 3rd Congresisonal District, has pled guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of violating FECA.

What did he do? He listed his campaign account as a personal asset in a home mortgage application. He did a lot of other stuff too - he also misrepresented his income and colluded with the seller to make it appear to the lender that he had paid the seller when he hadn’t. But it is the inclusion of the “personal use” element in the case that I think is interesting.

I’ve added Solomon Weisenberg’s Letter of Apology blog to the Blogroll. It is an interesting site for all things white-collar-criminal. See today’s post on Abramoff directed contributions.

Words of summary could not do justice - so if you haven’t already encountered Michelle Malkin’s summary of her dustup with the good people of “Main Street,” (oops, maybe I should say “peoples” so that there’s no implication that they’re the same people) well, here it is.

I love the deployment of the Wayback Machine.

Courtesy of the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Rep. Cunningham plea agreement. HT FlashReport.

A variety of unidentified sources have been talking about Don McGahn and his future, to the Washington Post’s The Fix. Apparently:

A source familiar with the selection process, who spoke without attribution because of the sensitive nature of the matter, said that McGahn made it through the background check without a hitch, but there were concerns that it would be difficult to replace him quickly at the NRCC with less than a year remaining before the 2006 midterm elections. Another Republican requesting anonymity to speak candidly about a private matter said that worries regarding McGahn’s past legal work for former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) might have made it difficult for him to be selected for the FEC post.

“to speak candidly about a private matter . . .”?? And then to speculate about how the Delay work Don has apparently done might affect his chances? What an odd way to describe the source’s motives - they want to speak candidly about a private matter, then they say something that has been said by others for several weeks. Maybe the significant thing is that the source should know better but buys this line, too. With friends like these . . .

Front page analysis this morning from the Washington Post’s Jeff Birnbaum. Front page! So there might be something newsworthy . . . judge for yourself:

For several years now, corporations and other wealthy interests have made ever-larger campaign contributions, gifts and sponsored trips part of the culture of Capitol Hill.

Corporate campaign contributions at the federal level to candidates have been illegal since 1907 . . . oh when you say “corporations” you mean “people who work at corporations?”

But now, with fresh guilty pleas by a lawmaker and a public relations executive, federal prosecutors — and perhaps average voters — may be concluding that the commingling of money and politics has gone too far.

Funny. The recent please I’m familiar with involve officeholders getting goodies (allegedly) for official acts. Is there a campaign finance element, or is this good-old-fashioned-Teapot-Dome type stuff? So - why the reference to campaign contributions?

After years in which big-dollar dealings have come to dominate the interaction between lobbyists and lawmakers, both sides are now facing what could be a wave of prosecutions in the courts and an uprising at the ballot box. Extreme examples of the new business-as-usual are no longer tolerated.

(snip)

No fewer than seven lawmakers, including a Democrat, have been indicted, have pleaded guilty or are under investigation for improper conduct such as conspiracy, securities fraud and improper campaign donations. Congress’s approval ratings have fallen off the table, in some measure because of headlines about these scandals.

“The indictments and the investigations have strengthened the feeling that people have that in fact there’s too much money in Washington and that the money is being used to influence official decisions,” said William McInturff, a Republican pollster with Public Opinion Strategies. “Polls show that neither party is held in high regard.”

I think that’s probably true, and that its a pox on both houses. But can we be clear about the facts, rather than lumping a bunch of stuff together? You can’t expect voters to make intelligent decisions about what solutions they might prefer - and which candidates should implement those decisions - if you won’t give them good information.

The latest court case came yesterday in San Diego when Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) wept openly after pleading guilty to tax evasion and conspiracy. His plea bargain came less than a week after public relations executive Michael Scanlon coolly admitted his role in a conspiracy to try to bribe a congressman. …

“I’ve been in town for 30 years, and it seems that every 10 years or so there is an episode of this type,” said Jan W. Baran, a Republican ethics lawyer at Wiley Rein & Fielding. “We clearly are at that period now.”

For the record, I agree with Jan. When I was a law student, I addressed a letter to him using a feminine honorific (I think it was Ms). I have much atoning to do.

. . . In addition, experts say that the most prominent cases are aberrational or else there would be even more investigations and indictments than there are.

Yet the activities under scrutiny can also be viewed as logical extensions of actions that once were rare but over time have become commonplace: massive political fundraising, freewheeling private travel given to lawmakers by groups interested in legislation, and the bestowing of other gifts and benefits on government officials by lobbyists.

Now I AM confused. This is the prevalent political culture, or it isn’t. The problem is anecdotal or commonplace. My head hurts.

As the Scanlon case demonstrates, the extent of this favor-buying has gone so far that the Justice Department is no longer deterred from bringing charges even if the gifts fall within Congress’s gift-giving limits or are below campaign finance maximums. “It doesn’t matter,” Brand said. Charges could come, he said, if “anything of value is given to a public official that can be linked to an official act.”

I won’t quote the rest - it tacks together some unrelated scandals and comes to the conclusion that people don’t like corruption in politics. I think - except for the Jan quote, which of course was excellent, penetrating, intelligent and wise - there is no news and precious little analysis in this piece. So, why is it here?

Robbin Stewart has blogged some of the administrative history behind the Leo Smith Advisory Opinion (1998-22), known to you all as That-Advisory-Opinion-where-the-FEC-said-a web-page-was-an-expenditure-requiring-a-disclaimer-and-a-lot-of-other-stuff. It appears Robbin received the public file containing the correspondence between the Counsel’s office and the requestor, and any public comments. What would really be interesting is to see the correspondence among Commissioners in advance of the opinion, back in 1998. Bet they didn’t say much about “blogs.”

Breaking reports indicate that Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham will plead guilty to income tax evasion. Courtesy of FlashReport.