Roll Call: House Panel Clears Aide’s $2 Mil Lobbying “Buyout”A few months ago, we reported that a top aide to the House Appropriations chairman received a multi-million-dollar buyout from his old lobbying firm while he was working on the Hill. Oh — and neglected to report the size of the deal.
That aide, Jeffrey Shockey, has now been cleared by the House Ethics Committee of wrongdoing, according to Roll Call (sub. req.).
It’s a bit of good news for Shockey — but only a bit: He and his boss, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), are both subjects of a much larger and more worrisome federal investigation into the Cunningham scandal, and the prosecutors in that case don’t give a hoot what the House panel says.
Anyway, given that the House Ethics Committee seems to do so little these days, it’s nice to get confirmation they’re showing up to work every now and then.