What an amazing thing.
Close aides to the governor suggested on Tuesday that the mood in the Spitzer home was tense . . .
I’ll bet. Why?
Investigators reviewing the scope of Mr. Spitzer’s involvement with prostitutes said on Tuesday that just in the past year he had had more than a half-dozen meetings with them and had paid tens of thousands of dollars to the ring, one law enforcement official said.
A person with knowledge of the service’s operations said that Mr. Spitzer had begun meeting with the prostitutes of the Emperor’s Club about eight months ago and had had encounters in Dallas as well as Washington. A law enforcement official said Mr. Spitzer also had an encounter with a prostitute in Florida. On some trips of several days’ duration, Mr. Spitzer scheduled more than one visit with a prostitute, this person said.
In his Washington visit with the prostitute, Mr. Spitzer is said to have used an alias to book one of his rooms at the Mayflower Hotel, the name of a close friend, the financier George Fox.
Mr. Fox released a statement yesterday that said he was surprised and disappointed by Mr. Spitzer’s misuse of his name
Mr. Hedgehog was unavailable, I guess. Here’s a handy review of the Mann Act, just as a refresher. Meanwhile:
Authorities were seeking the testimony of the woman known as Kristen, who worked for the Emperor’s Club service and is identified in the criminal complaint as having met with the governor last month in Washington…
After her encounter with Client 9, the prostitute told the booker for the agency that it had gone well, and the booker told her that he, in an apparent reference to Client 9, sometimes asked the women “to do things that, like, you might not think were safe.”
“Unsafe?” Like what? Smoking a cigarette? (Maybe that’s why he wanted to see them outside New York. They wouldn’t be at any Mets games, in any case.)
The Wall Street Journal wonders about the collateral McCain’s campaign used to secure its recent loan. Should a fundraising list and other campaign assets be valued at their value now, or what they might be worth without the owner as an active candidate? asks the editorial.
Are the incentives for a bank different when the potential defaulter is a powerful politician, rather than you or me?
Duh.
But, dear friends, how specific should the law be? Do we want a rule that prevents campaigns from using “political” assets as collateral, given their contingent value, and potential for mischief? Should we instead wrap “loans” up into the candidate’s use of his or her personal assets - unlimited, to be sure, but dependent upon the candidate encumbering the house and the car? (In McCain’s case, “house” should be plural, but that’s fine). Who does this hurt more overall? Challengers? Less wealthy candidates?
A FOTS forwards this story about California NAACP majordomo and longtime liberal fixture Alice Huffman’s career as a consultant, well-compensated, for Indian tribes.
Huffman’s firm, AC Public Affairs, operates out of the same office as the state NAACP. State records show it received about $40,000 in December from a campaign account funded by the tribes seeking compacts – the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians and the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation.
Despite the “appearance” problems with this, Huffman defends her role thus:
She continues her consulting work because “campaigning and politics is my livelihood,” she said. “That’s how I make my money to buy my Gucci handbags and other things that enhance my standard of living.”
Sure, if her position with the NAACP is unpaid, she will need to earn money somehow. Here’s a radical notion - why not PAY the President of the NAACP and then limit that person’s ability to earn outside income. You know, to avoid the appearance of impropriety.
Like we do for members of Congress.
The FEC has levied its second highest ever penalty in MUR 5666 against a government contractor who gave $78,000 in corporate funds via straw donors to two federal candidates. Here is the conciliation agreement.
From the FEC news release:
The FEC has accepted a conciliation agreement in which [Mitchell] Wade admits to knowingly and willfully violating the Federal Election Campaign Act (the Act) by funneling $78,000 in corporate contributions to two federal candidates. The Commission unanimously approved the conciliation agreement. …
This penalty brings the total civil penalties assessed by the FEC in 2007 to more than $4.7 million, which is the second largest amount ever collected in a single year in the Commission’s history. The Commission collected $6.2 million in all of 2006.
Mr. Wade used MZM corporate funds to reimburse employees and their spouses for contributions to the campaign committees of Representatives Virgil Goode and Katherine Harris. …
Respondents disclosed the violations of the Act to the U.S. Department of Justice and have cooperated with the Commission in resolving this matter. Mitchell Wade and MZM have also taken responsibility for the liability of the former employees of MZM and their spouses who acted as conduits for the reimbursed contributions.
(This is the contractor who purchased FRep. “Duke” Cunningham’s house (”FRep stands for “Felon Representative”), if you may recall). Why is this a complaint-triggered investigation? Wouldn’t DOJ refer such civil violations to the FEC? isn’t there some kind of operating agreement between the two agencies? You might wonder. I did.
As near as I can tell, the CREW complaint cited in the record was based on newspaper reports about MZM coercion of employee contributions. CREW filed its complaint 4 days after local papers in June 2005 reported that MZM employees claimed to reporters they were paid inflated salaries in order to contribute to candidates. CREW did no additional work, as far as I can tell. But the conciliation discusses information produced in the criminal investigation. How does this fit together? Does CREW deserve all the credit?
In General Counsel’s Report #2 we get some answers. In general, the explanation seems to be “both.” The CREW complaint triggered an ordinary investigation, and the DOJ referral opened another matter, and the two were merged into MUR 5666 because they raised similar issues about more or less the same people. It seems to my casual eye that the information pout of the DOJ investigation was the heart of the matter. (Additional descriptions of the plea agreement, entered into in February 2006, can be found in this Factual and Legal Analysis).
So, for those of you interested in “the rest of the story” well, there it is.
The Washington Post chronicles how those nasty special interests are “getting around rules on lobbying.”
Because, instead of figuring out the scope of the new rules, they should just, you know, stop.
The Senate passed the ethics bill, and apparently it is on its way to the president. In Section 109(b) members who use noncommercial air travel (i.e. fly on corporate aircraft) must reimburse the pro-rata charter amount for the number of seats used by the member. Expect travel on commercial aircraft (especially by staff) to increase. Maybe this will succeed where nothing else has, and encourage efficacy and sanity in the security lines.
Anyone care to bet how long it will take to make sure “Member of Congress” is among the class of individuals allowed to use the premier line through security?
Apparently Vista/Windows gives users a whole new set of opportunities to embed metadata in documents, forget it, and expose your secrets/rejected ideas/snark to the world.
IMac, anyone?
China orders death penalty for food safety official who accepted bribes for licensing adulterated medicine.
(As you may recall, the movie The Third Man was in part about adulterated medicine. Hence the title of this post.)
Transparency International’s 2007 Global Corruption Report focuses on corruption in the judiciary. Reading down the page, apparently the Justice Department’s political decisionmaking ranks up there with threats on life and limb in other countries. Isn’t there a wee lack of, I don’t know, perspective here?
HP has settled its SEC matter over whether it had properly disclosed the departure of an HP director. Apparently, the SEC (and the world) needed to know not just that a director has resigned, but why. Here, HP apparently was suppose to tell the SEC (and the world) that a director left over the internal spying flap. Which would kind of bring an end to the “information gathering” activity, wouldn’t it?