Rep. Don Young (R-AK) is refusing to talk about new claims that for over a decade, he received gifts from the same oil-industry executive whose ties to Ted Stevens were at the heart of that case last year.
Don’t bother me, don’t bother me,” the congressman commanded a reporter from the Anchorage Daily News yesterday. A spokeswoman for Young did not respond to a request for comment from TPMmuckraker. And even Young’s Washington lawyer, John Dowd, didn’t get back to the ADN.
In court documents filed Wednesday in the sentencing of oil-services contractor Bill Allen, prosecutors wrote that in 2007, Allen had confessed that from 1993 to 2006, he and a colleague gave gifts — including $1,000 golf clubs — to U.S. Representative A. That can only be Young.
Prosecutors write that Allen also confessed to making illegal corporate donations to Young — worth between $130,000 and $195,000 — by paying for his annual “pig roast” fundraiser.
Allen’s efforts to influence Alaska lawmakers have been central to the sprawling, years-long federal probe of corruption in the state.
Between 1995 and 2007, Young reported no gifts on his disclosure forms. Ominously, it was failing to disclose gifts from Allen that led to Stevens’s conviction last year, though the charges were dropped after prosecutorial missteps surfaced.
Young has been a subject of the federal investigation, thanks to his ties to Allen, for several years. Still, he narrowly won reelection last fall.