Paul Kiel June 22, 2006, 5:17 PM

Bloomberg News got ahold of the donor list for Rep. Alan Mollohan’s (D-WV) charity, and what do you know — it’s stocked full of contributions from companies that have benefitted from Mollohan’s widely-renowned earmarking abilities.

Mollohan steers tax money their way, they steer some to his charity.

According to Bloomberg, over the past six years Mollohan, who’s under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C., has earmarked $179 million for companies and nonprofits that gave to his charity. All that went to “21 companies and nonprofit groups that contributed $225,427 to the Robert H. Mollohan Family Charitable Foundation in 2004 — almost half of the charity’s revenue.” Nine of the top 10 contributors to Mollohan’s reelection campaign in 2004 also gave to the charity.

And in a set-up reminiscent of a certain former congressman’s favored charity, it costs donors $10,000 to pay for a foursome to join Rep. Mollohan during his annual golf tournament.

Those at the foundation deny that donors are buying access, of course — they just really want to see that West Virginia kids go to college. There’s one gem of a quote along those lines from one of Mollohan’s corporate donors. The poor guy is trying to rally to Mollohan’s defense, but just doesn’t seem to realize that he does more harm than good:

“Generally these kind of contributions are made by successful businesspeople…. An awful lot of successful businesspeople in this state know Congressman Mollohan.”

Yes, I bet they do…

Alan Mollohan