Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive
By Kirstin Ellison
Posted on Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 11:33:35 AM EST
Oh, man, is the heat up on John Doolittle, even more than we speculated about earlier this week.
On the same day Kevin Ring, Doolittle's former Legislative Director, resigned from his law firm amid Justice Department inquiries, Rep. Doolittle's house was raided by the FBI. The Congressman's office maintains that the focus of the raid was Doolittle's wife Julie, whose ties to Abramoff have been under investigation for some time.
From Roll Call (sub. req'd.):
On Wednesday evening, Doolittle issued a statement standing behind his wife.
"My wife has been cooperating with the FBI and the Justice Department for almost three years and that cooperation is going to continue in the future," Doolittle said.
"I support my wife 100 percent and fully expect that the truth will prevail."
And this is not going to make the GOP leadership happy:
The news could present a political problem for Boehner and Cole, because the two leaders have been particularly forceful in sending the message to their colleagues that ethical and legal scrutiny will not be tolerated in the new minority. Republicans lost in 2006 due, in part, to the relentless stream of scandals coming from their side of the aisle in the 109th Congress.
To be fair, though, this really is just a continuation of the Abramoff scandal, not an entirely new one. More details inside about the Doolittle household's ties to Jack Abramoff...
The Congressman may want everyone to believe that it's solely his wife who is under investigation, but he's not so squeaky clean. He received about $130,000 from Abramoff and his clients (one of the top recipients), and refused to give back the money or donate it to charity as most others did once the Abramoff scandal broke. On top of all that, Doolittle wrote some letters favoring Abramoff's tribal clients - yeah, just ask your friend Bob Ney how that sort of behavior worked out for him, Congressman.
But Julie Doolittle's ties to Abramoff are interesting in and of themselves, and very suspicious:
Earning her approximately $67,000, Abramoff's lobbying firm continued to keep Sierra Dominion on a $5,000-a-month retainer even after a charity event she was originally hired for was long canceled, according to a report by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. Some of the fees coincided in timing with actions taken by Rep. Doolittle on behalf of Abramoff's tribal clients.
Julie Doolittle only had three other clients, and they should sound pretty familiar to you: (1) Greenberg Traurig, Abramoff's former lobbying firm; (2) Signatures, the restaurant Abramoff owned and used to wine and dine lawmakers; and (3) the Korea-US Exchange Council, which was created by Tom DeLay's former chief of staff Ed Buckham.
In an interesting sidenote, Buckham and Abramoff's client base provided some of the largest contributors to John Doolittle's PAC...and one of Buckham's largest clients, PerfectWave, received help from Doolittle in securing a $37 million defense contract. Incidentally, PerfectWave owner Brent Wilkes was indicted in February in connection with the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal.
A tangled web, indeed...
Tags: John Doolittle, ethics in government, Brent Wilkes, Ed Buckham, Abramoff, Kevin Ring, Julie Doolittle, Sierra Dominion (all tags)
You are not logged in.
In order to post a comment, you must be logged in. If you have a member account, please log in to comment.
If not, you can make an account just by filling out the form below. It's quick and free.
