Comments (20)

bordersmuggler wrote on May 4, 2007 10:01 AM:

He was handed the same script as Gonzales.

Reader wrote on May 4, 2007 10:28 AM:

"He’s Impeachable, You Know" (NYTimes)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/opinion/03bowman.html

"...The right of Congress to demand explanations imposes on the president, and on inferior executive officers who speak for him, the obligation to be truthful. An attorney general called before Congress to discuss the workings of the Justice Department can claim the protection of “executive privilege” and, if challenged, can defend the (doubtful) legitimacy of such a claim in the courts. But having elected to testify, he has no right to lie, either by affirmatively misrepresenting facts or by falsely claiming not to remember events. Lying to Congress is a felony — actually three felonies: perjury, false statements and obstruction of justice..."

oldtree wrote on May 4, 2007 10:39 AM:

or, as it would explain it to the wife;

"we just don't have enough money to defend ourselves in our criminal trial. we have to continue to run for president so we can collect money. until the close the loophole that allows us to use campaign contributions for legal problems, we have to keep campaigning"

DF wrote on May 4, 2007 10:42 AM:

Here is Specter's excuse for not calling for AGAG to resign. Pathetic!

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/20070504_Why_Specter_isnt_calling_for_Gonzales_ouster.html

? wrote on May 4, 2007 10:44 AM:

Hmmmm

Well, who's in their 50's?

Empire wrote on May 4, 2007 10:57 AM:

Surprised ? ...not.

anon, too wrote on May 4, 2007 11:00 AM:

That sex, fraud and sorcery story looks like a bright, shiny object being floated to distract from the USAstory blimp that's floating over DC.

Anonymous wrote on May 4, 2007 11:17 AM:

The DOJ (via the FBI) is investigating "Civil Rights". I suppose that Bradley Schlozman is heading up that investigation?

Anonymous wrote on May 4, 2007 11:21 AM:

RE:

"...Specter said it was President Bush's prerogative to fire Gonzales and refused to call for the attorney general's ouster. But the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee said there was a "likelihood" that Bush would act once the clamor from Congress abated.

"I think there's a distinct possibility, maybe probability, that the president will act on his own," Specter said in an interview. "I think the president is more likely to fire him if he's not being told what to do . . . if he didn't have the 'anvil chorus' coming down all around him and making it appear like he's yielding to pressure...."

He's right, that's how you deal with a stubborn child under 5 years old.

AnneW wrote on May 4, 2007 11:24 AM:

I have no problem picturing escorts who are not all bombshells in their 20's.

Many of these escorts, if seen in public with clients, would have to be presentable, "normal" attractive and unremarkable.

A young Pamela Anderson type on the arm gets way too much attention.

I still love the fact that a legal secretary at Akin Gump was possibly a power player at the escort service. I bet she had some serious juice on some clients and opponents...stuff that her employers at Akin Gump would love to know about.

Read wrote on May 4, 2007 11:33 AM:

In interesting tidbit from the Spector article:

"...Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D., Vt.) and Specter are drafting a letter to the Justice Department asking about the nature of the ongoing investigations and whether the U.S. attorneys were asked to resign because they were pursuing matters that headquarters didn't want them to pursue.

"It's a ticklish question to ask because of the confidentiality of those investigations," Specter said. "Now there's sufficient grounds to pursue this. . . . It's not just fishing. It has the potential to be a real blow-up."...

So, it seems that Leahy's plan to this point has been to undercut the talking point about a fishing expedition. If he has the R's on the committee, or at least most of them saying that there is no fishing going on…Watch Out!! We are going into overdrive. Or, as Spector puts it "…It's not just fishing. It has the potential to be a real blow-up."

BigiMac wrote on May 4, 2007 11:53 AM:

I am not guilty ... this is a liberal media attack
I am not guilty ... I will not resign
I am not guilty ... I don't recall
I am not guilty ... the charges are unfounded
I am not guilty ... no comment to an ongoing investigation
I plead guilty your honor

Ian wrote on May 4, 2007 12:11 PM:

Someone at Dailykos is reporting that Grover Norquist is going to be outed as one of the DC Madam's clients. He's the head of the conservative think tank referenced by ABC

bobh wrote on May 4, 2007 12:28 PM:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070504/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_adviser_exits

gUY named crouch is resigning from the whitehouse. I wonder what his phone numbers are and if they correspond to any numbers on the dc madame's list?

Mad Dog Rackham wrote on May 4, 2007 1:33 PM:

"accused of cooking the books as well as sorcery and sexual harassment."

It's not bad enough that they're taking away my constitutional rights and bleeding the treasury dry, now they're going to turn me into a newt!

freepatriot wrote on May 4, 2007 1:40 PM:

but the repuglicans didn't have sex with those women ???

think about that

these guys were paying $300 an hour to NOT HAVE SEX WITH THOSE WOMEN

gotta question their judgement as well as their moral fiber

300 buck an hour, and you didn't even get laid ???

what the fuck is the matter with you ???

security code; again

as in, "Haven't we heard this lie before ???"

Mrs Panstreppon wrote on May 4, 2007 2:21 PM:

Take a look at today's NYT story about Stuart Bowen by James Glanz, "Inspector of Projects in Iraq Under Investigation" (link below).

According to Glanz, Bowen is under investigation for three specific accusations:

A payment to a contractor that the employees believed was unjustified;

A project to produce a type of report on reconstruction that they maintain is outside the Congressional mandate of the office;

And what the employees contend is an inflated estimate of how much money investigations by the office have saved American taxpayers.

Doesn't sound like much to me.

larry wrote on May 4, 2007 3:23 PM:

Ex-Aide Could Be Liability for Lawmaker

ERICA WERNER | AP | May 4, 2007 10:56 AM EST

WASHINGTON — As California GOP Rep. John Doolittle awaits prosecutors' next move in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal, his future is tied to that of a former aide who also worked with Abramoff.

Kevin Ring, Doolittle's one-time legislative director, quit his lobbying job last month, the same day FBI agents raided Doolittle's Virginia home. They had a search warrant for a fundraising business run there by Doolittle's wife, Julie, that had done work for Abramoff's firm.

Doolittle said Thursday he understands his wife's work might be under scrutiny.

"That's the issue, apparently, that Julie didn't do any real work ... their theory seems to be that she's a conduit," Doolittle told reporters. "And there's clear evidence that disproves that."

Ring, a 36-year-old married father of two, figures prominently in his former boss' connections to Abramoff, a friend of Doolittle's who gave the congressman campaign cash and use of his sports box. Doolittle, who has denied wrongdoing, tried to advance the agendas of Abramoff's clients both in Congress and with the Bush administration.

What Ring tells prosecutors could determine Doolittle's fate.

"The incentive for the subordinate to cooperate is to save his own skin by implicating a superior," said Kenneth Gross, a political law attorney in Washington.

Doolittle's chief of staff, Richard Robinson, and Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra declined to comment for this story, and Ring's attorney, Richard Hibey, didn't return calls.

As a lobbyist, Ring was a principal contact between Abramoff's firm and Doolittle, who came close to losing re-election to a ninth term last year amid questions about his ethics.

Ring's connection to the scandal, which has already netted 11 convictions of GOP congressional aides, Bush administration officials and others, runs contrary to the conservative, hardworking, humorous colleague that ex-Doolittle staffers remember.

They say Ring and Doolittle developed a friendship around their shared conservative views when Ring joined Doolittle's staff as an intern in 1993, straight off Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign. Both men were religious, Doolittle a Mormon and Ring a Catholic.

Ring and Doolittle were both "very strong in their convictions," said Terra Brusseau, Doolittle's former scheduler. She described both men as "very morally grounded."

Ring acted as a go-between when Doolittle wanted Abramoff, now in jail and cooperating with the government, to find work for Mrs. Doolittle. Ring left Doolittle's office in 1997 to work for then-Sen. John Ashcroft, then joined a House conservative group that Doolittle helped found before going to work for Abramoff's Preston Gates in 2000.

That year, Ring e-mailed Abramoff about Doolittle's interest in finding work for Mrs. Doolittle, according to documents released by Senate investigators last year. Aides said the Doolittles didn't recall that, and no job came through at that time.

In September 2002, Abramoff retained Julie Doolittle's Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions Inc. for about $5,000 a month for administrative work and planning a fundraiser that was eventually canceled. The arrangement lasted through February 2004.

Once at Preston Gates, Ring lobbied Doolittle on issues from water projects to labor laws.

According to billing records released by one Abramoff client, the Northern Mariana Islands, Ring billed the Marianas for at least 13 contacts with Doolittle and his staff from May through October of 2001. Doolittle took various actions to advance Abramoff's agenda for the Marianas around that time, including circulating a letter to House colleagues touting improved working conditions there, according to a report in the islands' Saipan Tribune.

Ring's connections to Doolittle helped him pick up clients in or near Doolittle's Sacramento-area district. Also, the Dry Prairie Rural Water Authority in Montana sought Ring out in 2000 to get access to Doolittle, who chaired a key House subcommittee, regarding federal authorization for a water project.

Dry Prairie general manager Clint Jacobs said his agency maintained confidence in Ring even after Ring's name surfaced in the Abramoff case. "We don't just hear rumors from Washington, D.C., and go out and change our representation," he said.

Ring called last month to say he was leaving Barnes & Thornburg LLP because of the investigation's apparent change in focus, Jacobs said. Ring joined Barnes & Thornburg in 2005 after leaving Abramoff's second firm, Greenberg Traurig.

Already Abramoff prosecutors have collected a guilty plea from one former member of Congress, Republican Bob Ney of Ohio, after first getting a former aide to plead guilty. Prosecutors wrung pleas from two other figures in the Abramoff case in part with promises not to prosecute their wives.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070504/doolittle-abramoff-aide

larry wrote on May 4, 2007 3:41 PM:

Doolittles plan for defense
GOP congressman, wife will set up separate funds for legal bills as they face Abramoff-related probe.
By David Whitney - Sacramento Bee Washington Bureau

Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, May 4, 2007

Rep. John Doolittle, insisting Thursday that his political career is far from over, said he and his wife will form separate legal defense funds to fight the ramped-up federal corruption investigation arising out of the Jack Abramoff scandal.

The separate funds, Doolittle said, will allow the congressman and his wife, Julie, whose consulting business has ensnared them in the investigation, to solicit contributions from people and businesses to pick up their escalating legal costs.

In his weekly press conference Thursday, Doolittle said the Justice Department urged them to hire separate lawyers because it believes "there is a potential conflict of interest between my wife and me."

The funds, which have to be approved by the House Standards of Official Conduct Committee, allow corporate contributions, but require all money be spent on legal matters.

The Roseville Republican said prosecutors believe Julie Doolittle's business, Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions, was used by Abramoff to funnel money to him in exchange for the congressman helping the convicted lobbyist's clients.

"Their theory seems to be that she is a conduit," he said, adding that he and his wife have clear consciences.

"We've certainly made every effort to be ethical and lawful in complying with the laws relative to Julie's work," he said. "We are utterly shocked that our government is suspecting us of committing a crime. ... I cannot believe that this is how our system of justice can work in this country."

But Doolittle suggested that the Abramoff investigation soon could spread even wider.

He said he has information from sources he would not name that federal agents have executed search warrants recently against two other congressional members -- a Republican and a Democrat -- in raids that have not become public yet. He said he thinks those raids also are related to the Abramoff probe.

The Justice Department refuses to comment on the investigation, not even acknowledging that the FBI raided the Doolittles' house last month.

House rules require members to immediately notify leaders when they have been served with a subpoena. But there are no such rules applying to search warrants, which are issued by a judge only after prosecutors affirm that they believe there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed.

The Doolittles' house in Oakton, Va., was searched under such an assertion April 13. Three computers belonging to Julie Doolittle's business were seized, along with files.

Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions was employed by an Abramoff charity, the Capital Athletic Fund, to do fundraising. It also has been paid a 15 percent commission for raising money for Doolittle's election committee and his political action committee. Critics have charged that arrangement is a backdoor way of delivering money to Doolittle.

Some political commentators have concluded that the imbroglio has undermined Doolittle's chances of being re-elected in 2008.

In November, when the Doolittle campaign was insisting there was doubt about whether the congressman was even under investigation, Doolittle came within 3 percentage points of losing to Democratic challenger Charlie Brown in a district with heavy Republican registration.

Brown is gearing up for a campaign against Doolittle again next year, and some have speculated that the only way the seat can be kept in Republican hands is if Doolittle steps down soon and the vacancy is filled by special election.

But Doolittle said he has no such plans, saying Thursday that "they would have to drag me out of here."

"There is no way I am stepping down," he said. "I am not resigning. Absolutely not."

According to the National Taxpayers Union, which monitors congressional retirement policy, Doolittle would qualify for an immediate annual retirement of about $30,000 a year if he stepped down now. House members now earn $165,200 a year.

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/166954.html

larry wrote on May 4, 2007 3:44 PM:

Will Doolittle do time?
Does the downfall of a local congressman mean something more than the latest corruption of a politician?

By Ralph Brave
ralphb@newsreview.com
Sacramento News and Review

Whatever the ultimate outcome of the U.S. Department of Justice’s ongoing investigation into Congressman John T. Doolittle and his wife, Julie--and it’s been going on for three years now--clearly his political career is over. Even if he and his wife unexpectedly locate some loophole to avoid indictment or imprisonment for the two corruption cases in which their fund-raising activities are inextricably entangled, the Doolittles’ unsavory skimming of campaign contributions and personally pocketing more than a quarter-million dollars have forever finished off their reputations among their own conservative kith and kin. From Sacramento to Washington, the only discussion of the Doolittle case by political insiders from both parties regards strategy over when and how and by whom he should be replaced.

Reflective of this reality are two headlines about the man recently published on the conservative editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal: “Doolittle, Too Late” and “Republican Residue.” The point repeatedly made there is that the FBI could have raided Doolittle’s home, as they did on April 13, “only after a judge has issued a search warrant in response to government claims that there is probable cause that a crime has been committed.” California Democratic Party strategist Bob Mulholland has little doubt about what’s happening. “I think the Republican Party will try to throw Doolittle to the wolves,” he said in an interview. “Once you get a 'Dear John’ letter from the FBI, no one returns your phone calls.”

Doolittle’s fall from being a member of the ruling Republican leadership in the House of Representatives to becoming a target in a U.S. Department of Justice corruption investigation follows a pattern similar to that of his Republican congressional brethren who are already in jail or might soon be. Doolittle’s wife set up a company--Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions--of which she was the only officer and employee. Suddenly Julie Doolittle had the “expertise” to obtain clients for “consulting” and “fund raising.” Most clients had business before committees on which her husband sat. (We don’t know for certain because the Doolittles refuse to release a list of her clients.) So far, over $150,000 from Doolittle’s campaign contributions has been paid out to his wife’s company. And his committee statements claim she is owed more than another $120,000. With California’s community-property law, it is the equivalent of Doolittle putting the campaign cash into his own bank account.

Whether Doolittle used his office and performed specific acts in exchange for monies paid to his wife’s company is the central legal issue at hand. But whatever the resolution of the question, nothing can wash the stink off a clearly corrupt arrangement.

The interesting question, though, is whether, after more than a quarter-century as a rising, and then prominent, political figure on the Sacramento and national scenes, the downfall of Doolittle means something more than the latest corruption of a politician.

Avalanche of animus
First, the personal qualities and character of Doolittle must openly and frankly be dealt with, for there is no figure currently on the California political stage who has consistently engendered as much overt loathing and disgust as Doolittle--as much from members of his own party as from his ideological counterparts. When he was fined by the Fair Political Practices Commission for laundering money to swing his 1984 election, his defeated opponent, former Senate Republican colleague Ray Johnson, foresaw that it would not be an adequate penalty to stop future misbehavior. “Oh God,” Johnson lamented in 1987 in the California Journal, “can’t we just drown him and get it over with?” A year after that comment, on the verge of Doolittle winning re-election based on another vicious campaign, Sacramento Bee columnist Pete Dexter couldn’t constrain his contempt. In print he pronounced Doolittle “a lying, unprincipled, crooked piece of human garbage.” Even for Dexter, this was strong stuff.

What evoked these and other expressions of outrage was the combination of characteristics that arises with regularity in American political life: the religious hypocrite, the sanctimonious scumbag. In Doolittle’s case, it is the devout Mormon with a highly selective ethical compass, which since the very beginning of his career consistently has drawn out such a continuous avalanche of animus toward him.

From Doolittle’s perspective, there must have been some considerable measure of spite and vengeful malice that motivated him and bridged the contradiction in his character. While many of the 1960s youth were struggling for political and cultural and personal liberation, the teen-aged Johnny Doolittle was dreaming of Richard Nixon. When he graduated as a history major from UC Santa Cruz in 1972, the town of Santa Cruz voted 96 percent for George McGovern. In the 1970s, while South America was in the throes of overcoming a century of colonialism and imperialism, Doolittle landed in Argentina as a Mormon missionary.

But in 1978, when he arrived in the state Capitol as a legislative aide to arch-conservative state Senator H.L. Richardson, commander-in-chief of Gun Owners of California and the Law and Order Campaign Committee, Doolittle finally had found a mentor and a base from which to operate. Richardson’s early sophisticated computer direct-mail operation gave Doolittle the weapons training he needed to do combat on the electoral battlefield.

Just two years later, Doolittle took the field as the Republican nominee for state Senate in the eastern Sacramento County district occupied by Al Rodda, a former college professor who at that time was the most respected member of the Legislature for his expertise and achievement in state education and finance reform. No one thought Doolittle had a chance, and the nonpartisan California Journal rated the seat as “Safe Democratic.”

When Doolittle emerged victorious in the most unexpected upset of the November 1980 election, the political establishment searched for answers. The incumbent’s complacency, the Doolittle smear that Rodda was “soft on crime” and voter confusion over the coincidental Capitol sex scandal of another state Senator with the initials A.R. (Alan Robbins from the San Fernando Valley) all were viewed as contributing to Doolittle’s triumph.

Revenge was sought. The establishment reapportioned Doolittle into a district that made him run against an incumbent Democrat, Leroy Greene, whom he could not and did not defeat. But because Doolittle had been elected to a four-year term in 1980, he continued to serve as a senator without a district. By 1984, he had landed in a newly redrawn district that was more favorable--but he faced a three-way race, with former Republican Johnson running against him as an Independent. Doolittle stooped to the gutter, funneling money to the Democratic candidate, who had no other support, in order to draw votes away from the popular Johnson. Doolittle survived by the margin of votes received by the Democrat. “Never has so little money done so much good,” pronounced Doolittle’s master, H.L. Richardson.

The FPPC fine that Doolittle would receive for these campaign violations would be the first, but not the last. Doolittle established a record and a hard-earned reputation as the zealously principled right-wing politician who zealously would do whatever it took to hold onto and expand his power. Perhaps the ultimate example of his principled unprincipled-ness occurred in the November 1994 general election for U.S. Congress. Facing a Democratic woman with a background as a software-company executive who had garnered the support of Hewlett-Packard, one of his district’s largest employers, Doolittle was taking no chances. The week of the election, voters received a letter with an endorsement of Doolittle by James Roosevelt, a founder of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and a son of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had signed the original Social Security Act into law in 1933. The mailer was significant because Doolittle had received extremely low ratings for his congressional record from all the major senior-citizen groups. Even more significant was the fact that, by then, Roosevelt had been dead for two years. On Election Day, Doolittle received 61 percent of the vote.

Bookends of an era
But Doolittle’s devious machinations may not have amounted to all that much if it also had not been for larger forces at work. In hindsight, one can identify the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 and the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 as the beginnings of a conservative ideological ascendance, one that more or less continued--and perhaps crested in the 2006 election. Whatever its sources and whatever accounts for its relative longevity, Doolittle’s rise and fall serve as the bookends of the era.

Whether it’s their aggressive overreach abroad or their negligent under-reach at home, the neoconservative Republican agenda with its ersatz Christian halo exhausted itself in failure. Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and climate change are among the key indicators of their collapse.

With time and a monopoly of national power on their hands, Doolittle and the House Republican leadership devolved into a corrupt clan of self-serving power brokers. In collusion with lobbyists like Jack Abramoff, Doolittle and friends found the economy of the Mariana Islands of urgent interest and importance. Projects unwanted by the Pentagon found millions earmarked for them by Congress members like Doolittle, who then collected considerable campaign contributions from the winning defense contractors. Arrangements were made so former staff could serve as the lobbyist interface between colluders and colludees. Meanwhile, Julie set herself up to grab a 15-percent commission from the contributions coming into her husband’s campaign coffers.

Conservative critics of Doolittle claim to have foreseen his bent toward corruption long ago. They point to his secret 1992 cooperation with liberal Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters to increase the perks available to members of the House of Representatives, from chauffeurs to per-diem allowances. Doolittle’s congressional colleagues and many of his constituents also had seen the drift of his ruthless campaign style to issues of serious concern. Promoting the Auburn Dam for decades as the only solution to the Sacramento Valley’s flood danger, Doolittle repeatedly turned aside compromises that would have addressed the problem. Instead, the Auburn Dam issue was required by Doolittle as a continuous campaign fund-raiser from the agricultural and developer interests, who want the water and want to pour concrete.

To whatever extent Doolittle’s decline signals a shift in the larger forces that are reshaping the state’s and the nation’s political dialogue, there still seems something exquisitely inevitable about him personally facing the prospect of criminal prosecution. His successful unbroken ride to power, while regularly violating the most basic ethical standards, must have had the effect of deluding him to believe there need not be any boundaries to his behavior.

In a remark suggestive of both his ambition and his underlying amorality, when he first arrived in Congress in 1991 Doolittle told a reporter, “You can do what you need to do here, and the only thing holding a person back is the person himself.” There is a growing likelihood that, in the near future, Doolittle will have some significant time on his hands to contemplate this insight.

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=318713