Under FBI Scrutiny, Mollohan Runs up $160K Legal BillWest Virginia congressman Alan Mollohan (D) has used $160,000 worth of services by a white collar criminal defense firm, according to new campaign filings.
Mollohan, who chairs the House panel which controls the Justice Department budget (including the FBI), has been under investigation by the FBI for a rather knotty mess of nonprofits, friends and real estate deals that appear to have made a lot of money for a lot of people.
According to documents filed by his campaign with the Federal Elections Commission, the law firm Kellogg Huber Hansen Todd Evan has collected $140,000 from his campaign. The campaign says that as of Dec. 31, 2006, it owed the firm another $20,000,
Mollohan has said that because of the investigation he would recuse himself from decisions concerning the FBI’s budget, but some believe that doesn’t resolve the conflict of interest.
“Just the fact that he’s not going to micromanage the FBI’s budget doesn’t mean he can’t play havoc with the Justice Department budget,” conservative watchdog Ken Boehm told CNSNews.com earlier this month. “When the Justice Department goes to his subcommittee - and they need all sorts of approval out of his subcommittee for other spending things and other things they want - they’re going to a man they’re investigating,” he said.
Boehm’s group, the National Legal and Policy Center, has extensively investigated Mollohan. The congressman’s office did not immediately have a comment on the matter.
For the moment, Mollohan’s records appear to show he’s spent more on his defense than Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), who’s spent around $120,000 for legal assistance relating to a federal investigation of his ties to Abramoff. But both men are dwarfed by the legal fees incurred by former Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA). As of December, Lewis had spent $860,000 on lawyers. His campaign faces a deadline of today to deliver an updated report covering expenses for the month of December, which may include more fees. Doolittle and Mollohan have already filed that report.
Update: Through a spokesman, Rep. Mollohan gave us the following statement: “The legal expenses were incurred in responding to the claims of a right-wing group in Washington that there were irregularities in my financial disclosure documents. That resulted in the preparation and public release of an extensive financial disclosure report and analysis last June. That work debunked the claims and the accompanying innuendos.”