Some days it's hard to catch a break.

Just ask former GOP operative James Tobin, recently convicted on charges stemming from a scheme to jam the NH Democratic party's phones in 2002. On Friday, Tobin's lawyers argued to have his harrassment conviction thrown out -- but the judge has so far declined to do so.

As you recall, on the eve of the 2002 election Tobin and other New Hampshire GOP campaign workers jammed the state Democratic party and the local firemen's union get-out-the-vote phones.

Three men, including Tobin, have already been convicted. A fourth has yet to be indicted -- federal prosecutors have said they know just the fellow who deserves it, but so far haven't named him.

This morning, the Washington Post reports conclusively that Secret Service personnel did not falsely portray themselves as journalists while doing advance work in a Mississippi town Bush was set to visit. An earlier article from a local paper suggested this was the case.

No, it was instead "two government employees" who first impersonated journalists from FOX News, and then impersonated the Secret Service.

Jerry Akins, the Mississippean who was the butt of the joke, had told the Biloxi Sun-Herald two days ago that he had "assumed" the two men were Secret Service, after they showed him "blue porcelain lapel pins" and a third man confirmed they were "with the Presidential entourage."

Akins' recollection seems to have improved since then. As he tells the Post now, the two men said they were Secret Service:

"[A]fter everything was over with, [the two "journalists"] approached us and they were laughing, and they said: 'You know, we really weren't with Fox. We're government, Secret Service men.'"

Now, impersonating a journalist is highly unethical and puts working journalists in jeopardy. But impersonating a federal officer -- a Secret Service agent -- is, I believe, a federal offense.

The Post quotes a White House spokesperson who assures us the administration "will discipline two government employees who masqueraded as journalists[.]" What will it do if they did in fact pose as Secret Service members?

Tom DeLay's replacement as House Majority Leader has spent nearly six months on privately-funded trips over the past six years.

According to a new study by the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) flew 45 times on corporate jets whose owners had business before Congress.

The Washington Post reports further:

Boehner accepted 42 privately sponsored trips from January 2000 to December 2005. That put him on the road to other countries and "golfing hotspots," often with his wife, Debbie, for about half a year, "only nine days of which he listed as being 'at personal expense,' " the center said.

However, to travel in the manner of a Fortune 100 CEO, Boehner had to forego earning a bucket of frequent flyer miles with his favorite commercial airlines -- a "personal expense" the CPI study doesn't include.

Remember, those miles aren't just redeemable for air travel anymore. You can get spa treatments, luggage`-- even Starbucks gift cards. That's not easy to give up!

The Defense Department built a giant database of "geospatial" information, including data on churches, mosques, schools and other locations in the United States, Knight Ridder reports tonight from its Washington bureau.

The work was performed by MZM Inc., the company once owned by Mitchell Wade, who has admitted to several felony counts of bribery and conspiracy in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham scandal.

The Pentagon built the database at its Counterintelligence Field Activities office, known as CIFA, which has made headlines for recording protest activities by U.S. citizens. Its mission is to protect defense facilities against foreign terrorists and spies.

As we reported on March 7th, crooked defense contractor Mitchell Wade's MZM, Inc. got three contracts from the White House for "intelligence services" in 2004. That seemed odd to us, since this was with the Executive Office of the President, i.e. the White House complex, whose budget requirements generally reflect the logistical needs of a large office. What "intelligence services" did they want that couldn't be fulfilled by the various intelligence and security agencies designed to provide them?

One question in particular stood out: how common is this? Just how many contracts has the White House given out for "intelligence services?"

The answer? Four. And three were to Mitchell Wade's MZM.

Our search of the Federal Procurement Data System, going back to the beginning of the Bush administration, returns only one other contractor who got a contract for "Intelligence Services" from the White House.

That one went to Pushkin Operational Consultants, Inc. (POC), a small contractor based in Pembroke Pines, Florida owned by Matthew Pushkin. POC's contract for $247,060 was signed August 13th, 2004 and lasted through May 31st of 2005. The only other indication of the nature of the contract is that POC classifies its industry as "Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services."

Several factors suggest that POC may have been working with MZM on the same project. Wade's contracts with the White House, for instance, worth a total of $254,437, started about the same time as Pushkin's - all in the Summer of '04. And one of Wade's 3 contracts also ended the same day as Pushkin's - May 31st, 2005.

Making their collaboration more likely, POC's business, like MZM's, was information systems. The Federal Procurement Data System shows that POC's other work (3 contracts worth $687,140.13) was for the Federal Technology Service, a government agency that provides IT and telecommunications services to various federal agencies.

He did not return our calls seeking comment.

So what does this tell us?

MZM's intelligence work for the White House, which began in the summer of 2004 and ended on July 22nd, 2005, just after Wade's involvement in the Cunningham scandal broke, was close to unprecedented. The Bush White has a history of 'stovepiping' intelligence and generally going outside proper channels in the field of intelligence. Given Wade's status as a convicted felon, his unique role as an intelligence contractor directly to the White House certainly raises questions.

As we've been telling you, Wade's company, MZM, was involved in some pretty shady stuff. Just what was this contract for? Was it related to the Iranian Democratization Foundation Wade established shortly before he received the contract? And how did MZM, whose owner is known to have bribed at least one congressman to obtain contracts, land this contract?

In Gautier, MS, U.S. Secret Service agents posed as FOX journalists when doing advance security surveillance in preparation for a presidential visit, the Biloxi Sun-Herald newspaper reports. They sure fooled local homeowner Jerry Akins!

Akins said he saw no problem with what happened and the government agents laughed about their fooling him. In the long run, he said, he'd rather have had a visit from the president than be on a segment of Fox News, anyway.

Oh, ha ha. Ashton Kutcher would be proud.

Update: Reader WV points out no one could positively identify the men as Secret Service, and there is a chance they could be volunteers, White House staff, or some other civilian component of the president's entourage.

The ink's not dry on Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne's nomination papers to be Interior Secretary, and folks are already cracking wise on the man who bounced a $111 check for a haircut.

"Now that's what I call FANCY!" writes reader KM. And from reader KC: "Do you mean to say that the hair cut displayed in your picture of Gov. Kempthorne is what $111 buys in Boise? Dude, go to the Hair Cuttery in DC! For $14 you can't possibly look worse."

And my favorite: "You mean he paid $111 to get a haircut? Which one?"

All right, nobody sent that one in. It's just my favorite haircut joke.

As in Florida, government prosecutors in D.C. and Jack Abramoff's defense lawyers have agreed that he needs much more time to tell the government what he knows - only this time the judge has said OK. According to court documents, a status conference that had been set for March 24th has been pushed back to June 6th, when Abramoff should find out his sentencing date for the bribery investigation. In the meantime, he's talking away....

He's due to be sentenced for the SunCruz fraud March 29th. That should be a good show, and possibility a glimpse of what's to come. Remember his lawyer promised that he'll "name names."

It can be no surprise that President Bush has selected someone wtih an incredibly dismal environmental record to head up the Department of Interior. But it appears that he's gone one step further and found someone who will follow through on Gale Norton's legacy of overseeing a department that was rife with muck.

Norton's Interior was Jack Abramoff's personal playground. Now, Kempthorne doesn't have any ties to Abramoff as far as I can tell (and you never know), but he does know how to creatively entertain a special interest or two.

Somehow missed in all the news reporting about Kempthorne's career as governor of Idaho was a scandal there back in 2003 over his use of corporate campaign contributions for extra perks. Here's how it went: there was a loophole in Idaho law that allowed donors to exceed the contribution limit by donating to Kempthorne's "office account." It was supposed to be for general expenses. But eight corporations all chipped in and, beyond the $5,000 each had already paid to his campaign, paid him a total of $23,000 for this special "office account."

But this didn't go to staplers, paper clips and water coolers, no. He used the money for "restaurant meals, travel, National Governors Association activities, flowers, books and a haircut." And at least one of those donors, Qwest, got a lot of help from Kempthorne on a key piece of legislation that year.

After an uproar in the Idaho press and legislature, the Idaho Attorney General moved to pass a law that closed the loophole.

And it seems that Kempthorne really suffered for it. Last year, he bounced a $111 check paying for a...haircut.

Hmm...I wonder who it will be covering Kempthorne's haircut now that he's at Interior?

From the Helena Independent Record:

Bob Keenan, the top Republican leader in the Montana Senate, said Thursday he is considering challenging Sen. Conrad Burns in the primary election because he is "concerned" about Burns' re-election chances because of a lobbying scandal.

The Montana Democrats have done an excellent job of making the case against Burns, who was really tied in to Jack Abramoff (See our bio here for just how tied in). But last week's Vanity Fair piece has really sent the Republicans into a panic. It's easy to see why:

"Every appropriation we wanted [from Burns' committee] we got. Our staffs were as close as they could be. They practically used Signatures as their cafeteria."

I don't know how much of a chance this guy's got, but it sure would be fun.

A third Democrat has entered the race for Rep. John Doolittle's (R-CA) seat: Michael Hamersley, who's best known for blowing the whistle on his superiors at KPMG for sham tax shelters. It resulted in a big criminal investigation, he was removed from his job, etc. In his press release, he calls himself a "Tax and Ethics Expert," and it sounds like he's going to be running hard on integrity.

Doolittle, you'll remember, has remarkably managed to be a big part of both the Abramoff and the Cunningham scandal - Tom DeLay is the only other congressman who was so ambitious.

Life after Jack...

Holy man and right-wing talk show host Rabbi Daniel Lapin is having financial difficulties now that Jack Abramoff isn't funneling money through his organization anymore. Oh, those were the days...

Thanks to TPM Reader DG

Yesterday we reported that Mitchell Wade's company, MZM, had at least one contract with an intelligence office within the Department of Energy. What does it mean?

One point jumps out: The stain is bigger than we thought. This deal between Wade -- who's confessed to bribing now-jailed Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) -- and DoE's Office of Counterintelligence adds a third government body to the list of those who used Wade. First were two offices within the Defense Department, then the White House, and now Energy.

But, like an episode of 'Lost,' it raises more questions than it answers. What was MZM doing for DoE's CI office? How did they land the deal? Was it related to MZM's arrangements with the White House and DoD? We don't know. We aim to find out. If you have any leads, don't be shy -- drop us a line.

"Cardinals" Try to Rein In Earmarks

House appropriations chiefs are doing the reform dance -- limiting the number of earmarks a lawmaker can insert to ten. That's less than half of 25, the average number of earmarks per legislator in recent years. That's still 4,350 earmarks too many.

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We've known for a while that Mitchell Wade's bribery scheme won him contracts with the Pentagon.

But now we've discovered that Wade's company, MZM Inc., had at least one contract with an intelligence office inside the Department of Energy, according to a document obtained by TPMmuckraker.com.

Wade pleaded guilty two weeks ago to several felony counts of bribery and conspiracy. He was a key player in the corruption scandal of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA), who took $2.4 million from contractors, MZM's Wade foremost among them, in exchange for government contracts.

To date, MZM's involvement with the Energy Department has not been reported.

But an invoice we obtained shows MZM performed "support services" to the agency's Office of Counterintelligence.

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As you know, Sen. Pat Roberts' (R-KS) Senate intelligence committee has been sitting on the "phase two" of its inquiry into WMD Iraqi intel for two years now -- the part that's supposed to look into whether the White House overstated the intelligence when making its case for war.

Roberts popped his head up two days ago to say his team was "making progress" on the report -- an odd announcement for a couple reasons. First, the matter's been out of sight and mind for most Americans; with the situation in Iraq worsening and the president's poll numbers plummeting, why bring back an old nightmare?

Second -- it's been two years, chief. Everybody knows if it was up to Roberts this would have been dropped long ago. Who is he kidding?

Here's the scuttlebutt: Democrats on the committee were preparing to make public complaints about Roberts' continued foot-dragging, and the chairman made the announcement as a pre-emptory strike. (Big surprise, the Dems wouldn't call back to confirm. Neither would Roberts' office.)

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So it looks like we're going to have one more round of journalists fighting subpoenas in the Plame case. The Times reports today that Scooter Libby's attorneys have subpoenaed Judy Miller and Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, Matt Cooper of Time, and Tim Russert of NBC. According to the Times, Miller's lawyer will be fighting her subpoena.

Lost in all of the reporting about former domestic policy advisor Claude Allen's trouble with the law is his remarkable political career, which got going with his work as spokesman for Sen. Jesse Helms' re-election campaign in 1984 and reached its height with his position as the abstinence czar in the Department of Health and Human Services during Bush's first term. Much more on that later in the day.

But back in 1984, when Allen was still a freshfaced GOPer, he hadn't quite mastered the art of understatement, code-speak and spin that a right-wing operative needs to do his work. During the campaign in '84, a reporter from the Greensboro News-Record called to ask him about Helms' strategy; he replied that Helms' opponent was vulnerable because of his links "with the queers." He went on:

We could expound on and undertake a campaign against Jim Hunt's [Helms' opponent] connections with the homosexuals, the labor union connection, the radical feminist connection, the socialist connection.... We could go back and do the same thing with the queers.

Now, Allen went up for a judgeship in 2003, and during the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Feingold (D-WI) used the opportunity to ask him about this little indiscretion. Allen's defense? This may sound familiar - it was all a big misunderstanding. He'd been misquoted:

"I said, 'I'd been on the campaign for two years and I have seen a lot of very strange, abnormal, out-of-the-ordinary individuals and groups working across the campaign, sir.'

And, in fact, I did use the word queer. I used the word queer, in my mind, I think at the time, in the dictionary, it was described as odd, out of the ordinary, unusual. I did not use the word as a pejorative; I did not use the word to denigrate any individual or any group.

More later on Allen's political career.

Over on Talkingpointsmemo.com, Josh noted that the administration is being pushed to hire former Congressman Fred Thompson, whose gravitas and experience could stabilize a White House that's begun to list sharply.

Thompson's gravitas and experience are already in use, however -- on the hit television series Law and Order, where he plays District Attorney Arthur Branch. And as was noted previously, one of the Law and Order shows (Criminal Intent) is going to be investigating the brutal murder of a Secret Service agent, which spreads into an investigation of the Abramoff affair, although it's TV so they don't call it the Abramoff affair.

Conflict of interest? Thompson doesn't actually act on Criminal Intent, so any information discovered in the course of shooting the show (photos of TV-Abramoff and TV-Bush?) probably aren't relevant. And he would not have to TV-recuse himself from any TV-prosecution that might touch the TV-White House.

But he's got one possible disqualifier: Having become accustomed to Law and Order's "ripped from the headlines" scripts, Thompson is probably used to working with material that's more closely based on reality than the stuff the White House reads off of, most days. Could he make the transition?

Jefferson, Bloody but Unbowed

Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) may be under federal investigation for swapping favors for African telecommunications companies in exchange for stock and jobs for his family members. But he's carrying about his business as normal, Roll Call assures us. (Jefferson has said he is "disappointed and somewhat perplexed" by the allegations.)

In the last few weeks, Jefferson has held a fundraiser at the DNC, spoken at press conferences, even led a congressional delegation to his home district, the paper reports. (Roll Call)

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On FOX News Channel's Hannity and Colmes, Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) tells America she's not just staying in her Senate race, she's staking millions from her personal fortune on it.

"I'm in this race, and I'm going to win," she tells host Sean Hannity, who interviewed the Congresswoman sans his liberal sidekick, Alan Colmes.

Raising the image of her father's death -- "Sean, you were there that day," she tells Hannity -- Harris says, "he gave us a legacy of living a life of integrity."

Harris said she was putting everything - her future, her reputation, "my father's name" and "legacy," $10 million of her inheritance, into her campaign.

Harris hired a top-gun lawyer two weeks ago, after she was named as a recipient of illegal campaign donations from MZM Inc. CEO Mitchell Wade, who has pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy. Harris attempted to insert a funding earmark that would benefit MZM -- but she missed the deadline to get it included in the appropriations bill.

On H&C, Harris says she is spending her complete inheritance on the race in order to create "a referendum on reform and ethics."

Of Wade's contributions, Harris says "I didn't [know]" they were illegal. "He was a bad guy."

Do you remember back in January when there was all that hysteria about that Jack Abramoff character? The House Republicans rushed to the microphones (beating the Democrats by a couple of days) in order to present their lobbying reform plan. Speaker Dennis Hastert said serious things like:

I think we need to tighten even further the gift rules. A Member of Congress should be able to accept a ball cap or a t-shirt from the proud students at a local middle school, but he or she doesn't need to be taken to lunch or dinner by a lobbyist... I think members can probably function very well in this town without having to go out lunch with a lobbyist or to dinner with a lobbyist. They can pay for it for themselves, they have means to be able to do that, if that's what we have to do.

How times have changed. Now the Abramoff investigation seems to be in a lull, the public is concentrating on other things, and so today the House Republicans revealed their new and improved lobbying reform proposal. No more talk of banning gifts and meals - now the tough measure is that lobbyists would be responsible for disclosing them. And they've hit on the genius stroke of using this opportunity to go after 527 organizations, political groups like MoveOn that have been very effective for the Democrats (and for Republicans - think Swift Boat Vets - though less so). As the AP puts it, "More recently, Republicans strategists have expressed concern about the efforts by Soros and others to boost Democratic prospects in the congressional midterm elections."

So they've done away with one of the pillars of their reform effort they made so much noise about in January and tacked on a measure that's a transparently political gambit. Crafty. Let's see if that's noticed in any of the papers' coverage tomorrow morning.

As I mentioned yesterday, the pressure's building on Grover Norquist, an even more significant player in the Republican machine than Jack Abramoff.

But I didn't go into detail on how he collected his fees for laundering money for Jack's tribal clients (why the laundering? Because Ralph Reed didn't want it to be known who he was working for). Norquist's non-profit, Americans for Tax Reform, made a pretty penny on the transactions - at least $60,000 that we know of.

There's one transaction that's particularly sketchy, and which Norquist has never adequately explained. In early 2000, Abramoff was trying to funnel money to Reed in order for him to start one of his anti-gambling jihads down in Alabama - the Mississippi Choctaw were footing the bill. The Choctaw's money went to Reed (through ATR) in three payments of $300,000. Of the first $300,000, Abramoff wrote Reed in an email, "I need to give Grover something for helping, so the first transfer will be a bit lighter." ATR then wrote a check for $275,000 - so $25,000 was Grover's fee. But it seems Abramoff thought that fee would apply for the total of the money funneled through ATR, so when Grover took another $25,000 off the second payment of $300,000, Abramoff wrote to himself in an email, "Grover kept another $ 25K!" If Abramoff wasn't totally expecting Grover to keep this money, it's hard to believe that the Indians were.

When Time asked him about this last year, Norquist vaguely replied that he had permission: "He says a Choctaw representative--he can't remember who-- instructed him on two occasions to keep $ 25,000 of the money for his group."

If the CREW complaint results in an IRS investigation, and the Senate Finance Committee really starts asking questions in their investigation of Abramoff's shenanigans with non-profits, Norquist is going to have to sharpen up his answers. From the pieces out today, it appears that he's decided to hunker down and wait out the storm following the complaint. Usually talkative, he didn't respond to requests for comment, although ATR has promised an "official" reaction later. Can't wait.

Here's an interesting -- but overlooked -- detail of the Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) saga: one of the crooked contractors who bribed the Duke Stir was apparently involved in a Total Information Awareness-like data-mining operation that looked at U.S. citizens' data.

Mitchell Wade, former CEO of MZM Inc., pleaded guilty to several conspiracy and bribery charges a few weeks ago in connection with the Cunningham scandal. But a little-noticed piece of his history goes into one of the most sensitive domestic spying operations we have heard of to date: the Pentagon's Virginia-based Counterintelligence Field Activity office (CIFA).

Wade got over $16 million in contracts with CIFA by bribing Duke Cunningham, who forced earmarks in to Defense appropriations bills on his behalf. Furthermore, Wade's second-in-command was a consultant to the Pentagon on standing up the operation.

In its brief life -- it was created in 2002 -- CIFA has had trouble keeping its nose clean. Despite the ink that's been spilled on the center, little is actually known about what it does, and how MZM serviced it.

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Senate candidate Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) appearing on FOX's Hannity and Colmes tonight -- we expect this to be her major announcement.

On Monday, we noted that RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman had killed an appointment in the State Department as a favor to Jack Abramoff, and yesterday we lavished you with several examples of Mehlman's scorn for corruption and rank hypocrisy exhibited by...people like himself. But here's another that's particularly galling: during an interview in January, Mehlman was asked about a meeting Bush had with the President of Gabon, Omar Bongo, in 2003. The details have never been quite nailed down, but it is known that Bongo had been in negotiations with Jack Abramoff to procure such a meeting for the fee of $9 million.

Here's how Mehlman responded when asked:

"That's absurd," he tells me, waving his hand dismissively. "Utterly absurd. I have worked with George W. Bush from 1999 to 2004. The notion that anyone could set up a meeting is ridiculous."

Of course, we do know that the Prime Minister of Malaysia was able to do just that through Abramoff for the fee of $1.2 million. And Prime Minister Mahathir was a very happy customer - and a little more candid about how things are done in the Bush White House:

"I did not touch the money at all. In the US, it is a practice that if you want to meet their leader, you have to go through a lobbyist and the lobbyist has to be paid... That is their system. It is not corruption at all and it is very open, but they don't reveal names."

Mark your calendars...

As the trial dates now stand, there will be two, count 'em two former administration officials on trial at the end of April. David Safavian, the former head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy who was indicted for lying about his ties to Jack Abramoff, is set to start his trial April 18th. Claude Allen, the former domestic policy advisor to Bush arrested for creative shopping, is set for an April 27th trial.

The ACLU has posted to the web FBI documents detailing its surveillance of a nonviolent peace group in Pittsburgh, PA. A representative sample, dated Nov. 29, 2002:

The Thomas Merton Center. . . is a left-wing organization advocating, among many political causes, pacifism.

TMC holds daily leaflet distribution activities in downtown Pittsburgh and is currently focused on its opposition to the potential war with Iraq.

The report is about as outrageous as any Communists-under-the-floorboards dispatch from the Hoover era. But the real outrage is that it was written just a year out from the 9/11 attacks. Remember, tips were still pouring in about possible terrorist activities from all sources. We were still heeding warnings of a shadowy enemy who could strike at any time.

Amid that climate of immediate fear, at least one FBI special agent was assigned to spending several hours surveilling a political group, taking notes, and typing up reports on what he or she saw.

With Washington's ops centers and situation rooms still reeling with the very real concern of another terrorist attack, how could someone assign an agent several hours of watching (and writing about) a nonviolent political group? How many leads could that agent have run down, if political surveillance was not the priority of his or her superiors?

Then I saw an email from reader MM -- and keep in mind, this is all before my first coffee of the day -- which quoted RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman's latest note to supporters:

"Our President has no more basic responsibility than to protect the American people and fight terrorists who want to kill us. . . . Democrat leaders never miss an opportunity to put politics before our nation's security. Make your voice heard. Tell Democrat leaders to stop playing politics with national security."

I couldn't help but wonder: if an FBI agent got assigned to tail Ken Mehlman, what would the report read like?

Tax Cheats Making Millions off Federal Government

Over 3,800 companies won contracts with the federal government despite owing a total of $1.4 billion in taxes, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee revealed yesterday.

It takes a special sort of CEO to get the government as a client even though he owes it money. But, as the panel pointed out, it takes a truly rare individual who will then use his profits to buy himself a fancy car, a new boat, or a million-dollar property. (USA Today)

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Yesterday, Roll Call had a story that Justice Department investigators had gone down to the House and Senate to pull certain lawmakers' financial disclosure records. A number of those members we knew to be in trouble - Abramoff investigation luminaries like Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT), Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) and Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX). No surprises there - although it makes it that much harder for them to claim that rumor of their investigation is just a liberal conspiracy. (Burns' spokesman gets a brownie point for some excellent spin here - saying the DoJ poring over Burns' records is "good news for us," since the earlier Burns is investigated, the earlier he'll be cleared.) A number of Burns' aides, a DeLay aide, and a Doolittle aide also came up - again, no surprise there.

But, according to the piece, there was a handful of lawmakers that didn't make sense. They were: Reps. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and John Sweeney (R-N.Y.), as well as Del. Eni Faleomavaega (D-American Samoa). What was the DoJ looking for? Paul Kane, the reporter at Roll Call, didn't have a good reason, and neither did any of those lawmakers' offices.

But it's actually not so mysterious.

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The "Evil Twin" defense? One big misunderstanding? Claude Allen's lawyers are going to have to work harder than that.

The Washington Post reported today that Claude Allen admitted that he was committing fraudulent returns when he was initially caught by a store manager. They cited a "charging document."

Well, we have the charging document here. Read it for yourself. It makes for a pretty devastating case against Allen, since he was caught on video making the returns - and this can be matched up with his credit card records.

On Claude's admission, the document reads "Allen had receipts from previous purchases at Target stores and admitted to Agent Schomburg [a "Target loss prevention manager," according to the Post] that he was committing fraudulent returns."

Seems pretty clear to me.

Well, it appears that we'll have to wait a little later for our first trial of the Abramoff scandal. The trial date for David Safavian, the administration official indicted for lying about his ties to Abramoff, has been pushed back from April 3rd to April 18th. So says the Grand Ole Docket.

For quite awhile, Grover Norquist has stood blithely in the eye of the hurricane as his pals Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed have been swept up in bad publicity. Maybe that's changing. As we noted below, the Senate Finance Committee is ramping up their investigation of Abramoff's sham charities. They will no doubt be giving Grover's Americans for Tax Reform a hard look.

And today CREW filed a complaint with the IRS - pointing out that it's not exactly in ATR's mission statement to be a money-laundering operation for Jack Abramoff. Ask not for whom the bell tolls? Oh, but if there's one thing we can be sure of, it's that Grover will NOT go easily.

For those eager for all the gruesome details, we have a rundown of Grover's shenanigans with Abramoff here.

RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman has in the past taken a hard line against unethical shenanigans by public officials -- which is why we were shocked to learn from Vanity Fair that he had assisted corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff in hatcheting a senior administration official, for the benefit of Abramoff's clients.

Over at TPM, Josh asked readers to send in their favorite Mehlman specimens of bamboozlement. Here they are.

Mehlman has long been clear that people like him should be taken to task. From the "His Own Advice is His Best Advice" Category:

On public trust: "The public trust is more important than party, which is why the first solution to the problem is rooting out those who have done wrong without regard to party or ideology....Public service is a sacred trust, and we cannot allow it to be sullied by anyone . . . Democrat or Republican."

On the evils of power: "One of the oldest lessons in history is that power corrupts....And if we are to learn from that particular lesson of history, then we must take a stand, right here, right now, against corruption."

Agreed on all points. But when the hit piece on Sen. Harry Reid (R-NV) came down from the AP, Mehlman was the first to wag the finger:

"You can say, 'I'm going to politically posture,' or you can say, 'This is about people who did wrong things and are being held accountable,'" he said.

"But it's hypocritical to say, 'This is a Republican scandal,' when the things Republicans are accused of doing are also things (Reid) apparently did," Mehlman continued.

"I'm not going to play guilt-by-association, but if you do play guilt-by-association, the fact that you're more guilty than the people you're accusing is going to come back to haunt you."

Yes, indeed. Finally, there's this finest of specimens of Abramoff ignorance from Mehlman, who shared a Sabbath dinner with him:

"Abramoff is someone who we don't know a lot about. . . We know what we read in the paper." Or in magazines like Vanity Fair, presumably.

Roll Call newspaper notes this morning that the Senate Finance Committee's got its hands on new documents relating to disgraced superlobbyist Jack Abramoff. It's a part of the story worth keeping an eye on, for a couple reasons.

The committee is probing Jack's ties to nonprofits, as well as the involvement and knowledge of Jack's employers, lobby firms Greenberg Traurig and Preston Gates and Ellis, in his corruption. To date, those firms have largely dodged the bullet, pleading ignorance of Jack's misdeeds. But scandal-watchers say that's hard to swallow. We'll be following up on that in the future (if the Finance Committee doesn't beat us to it.)

Also worth noting: the Finance Committee is chaired by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), who's in the habit of keeping talented investigators on his staff. If he sets them on the Abramoff case in earnest, there's no telling what they will unearth.

That said, Grassley isn't committing to public hearings, which means he may want to keep some of the good stuff under wraps. That's understandable -- all roads from Jack lead eventually to lawmakers' offices. Who wants to be the guy whose committee hearings bring down a colleague, even if he's tainted? Here's to hoping they'll let the sun shine in.

Ronnie Earle's DeLay Subpoenas Thrown Out

Ronnie Earle, the Travis County prosecutor in Texas who indicted Tom DeLay on money laundering charges, has been engaged in a litigation war with DeLay's attorneys ever since that indictment. Yesterday, DeLay's side won one battle when an appeals court ruled that Earle should have stopped issuing subpoenas back in December - the case was halted then in order to hear an appeal on one of the disputed charges against DeLay.

So all those subpoenas issued over the past few months - to DeLay's various and sundry associates, to associates of crooked defense contractor Brent Wilkes - are null and void. This doesn't mean that Earle can't go back and subpoena these people later after the appeals process is sorted out, but it does mean that there will be no more news from his investigation until March 22nd, when the appeals court will hear arguments on that disputed charge against DeLay. (Houston Chronicle, AP)

Katherine Harris Speculation Update

No one knows quite what her major announcement this week will be - whether she'll drop out of the race for Senate or not, but here's a fresh suggestion that seems to be credible. From the Times:

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Over on Talkingpointsmemo.com, Josh observes a bizarre twist to the case of sticky-fingered White House aide Claude Allen: he may have an evil twin, who used his identity in his scam:

As you know, we've been following the bizarre case of Claude Allen, former top advisor to President Bush who was arrested a few days ago and booked and charges stemming from a lengthy shoplifting spree.

Now, here late this evening I got an email from TPM Reader WH who directed my attention to today's All Things Considered on NPR in which Michele Norris interviews Michael Fletcher, a reporter with the Post who's been covering the story.

Now, right at about 1:40 into the interview comes this exchange ...

Norris: We should note something, Michael. Apparently Claude Allen has a twin brother?

Fletcher: Yes, he does. He has an identical twin brother who even close friends can’t tell them apart when they see them. And people have seen him and close friends say that Mr. Allen has indicated to them that maybe his brother holds the key to this entire puzzling affair.

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This would seem to be a pecadillo by Tom DeLay's standards, but a whopping fine from the FEC is not what he needs with all his financial strife at the moment. Remember, he's got a defense fund to worry about.

It seems that the FEC had its curiosity piqued when it came across a disclosure for the sale of ARMPAC's (DeLay's political action committee) mailing list to DeLay's Congressional Committee. The disclosure said that the list was worth $3,138.87. That seemed fishy to the FEC; and outside observers agree that it sounds way low. DeLay's committee responded Friday to their inquiry by saying that the list was "valued by several vendors." We'll see if that satisfies the FEC.

Gary Bauer's committees got hit with a $46,000 fine last year for a similar problem. $46,000...that's at least two weeks' worth of lawyering, no?

As Josh noted a couple weeks ago, the CIA Inspector General has opened an investigation into Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, a CIA career official with ties to Brent Wilkes, the crooked defense/intel contractor who bribed former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA) with more than half a million dollars.

Foggo, a "lifelong friend" of Wilkes, has been involved in contracting at the CIA for much of his career, including support for 'operations.' In other words, making sure spies in the field have what they need to complete their missions. Support people are supposed to find ways to get the mission done, and Foggo's said to have had a willingness to bend the rules to get what he wanted.

But it appears now that Foggo may have taken that a step further; Newsweek reports the CIA IG is examining Foggo's involvement in landing a $2 million to $3 million contract for a company connected to his pal Wilkes to deliver bottled water to CIA operatives in the field.

For now the Foggo investigation is focused on a single contract -- but there is widespread speculation that he had more going on than that. And with a career spanning more than 20 years, most of them in contracting-related positions, it's not a stretch. We hear talk, for instance, that he pressured underlings to support his efforts, including pushing other intelligence offices to use Foggo's favored contractors. "He had the reputation of being an operator, in the negative sense of the word," one former agency official told me. "Foggo tends to be a Boss Tweed type person," said another.

If you're a DOJ lawyer looking for a promotion these days, seems one of the best things to do is be in the midst of a major corruption investigation.

The prosecutor who has headed the office at the center of a number of high-profile GOP corruption investigations - Jack Abramoff, David Safavian, Michael Scanlon, and Mitchell Wade - is moving on. He's been there since May of 2004.

Kenneth Wainstein, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, has been tapped to be Assistant Attorney General for National Security.

You might remember that another key prosecutor in the Abramoff case, Noel Hillman of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Sector, was recently nominated to a federal judgeship in New Jersey, sparking calls for a special prosecutor. I wouldn't be surprised if that effort was renewed.

Wainstein's office is at the center of the Abramoff investigation, along with a number of other agencies, including the DoJ's Public Integrity - Abramoff and Scanlon both pled guilty in the U.S. District Court in D.C. And it is his office that is prosecuting David Safavian. His office is also busy carrying on the investigation into crooked defense contractor Mitchell Wade's full-fledged corruption; as the Post reported a couple of weeks ago, that investigation has spread into the Department of Defense.

(Ed. Note: Thanks to TPM Reader KM for the tip.)

There was such a wealth of muck in David Margolick's Vanity Fair piece on Jack Abramoff last week that it was possible to let the occasional morsel slip by. The piece mentions, for instance, that Ken Mehlman (who, like many, was uncomfortably close to Abramoff) got his hands dirty:

"...according to documents obtained by Vanity Fair, Mehlman exchanged email with Abramoff, did him political favors (such as blocking Clinton-administration alumnus Allen Stayman from keeping a State Department job)..."

Now, this parenthesis is news; as far as I can tell, it hasn't been reported before. So the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman, who like everyone else says he barely knows Abramoff was actually killing nominations for him only a few short years ago.

Now, to properly appreciate its delectability, you need a little more backstory on Stayman. So let me give you some more of the background details.

Stayman had been on Abramoff's hit list for a long, long time, because, as a higher-up at the Interior Department, he had been an ardent advocate for bringing the sorts of labor and immigration reforms to the Northern Mariana Islands that Abramoff had been hired to squelch. How do I know that Abramoff wanted Stayman gone? Because Abramoff said so in one of his famous emails - this one leaked long before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee began investigating him.

From the Washington Post, back in 1998:

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The New Republic has an interesting story on the feud between Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Grover Norquist, the Republican power broker and head of Americans for Tax Reform, who has extremely close ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

McCain, who has spearheaded an investigation into Abramoff's misdeeds, appears to be letting Norquist off the hook, despite the fact that Norquist's fingerprints are all over Jack's dealings.

Norquist and McCain have hated each other for about a decade, since McCain started pushing for campaign finance reform, TNR's Ryan Lizza tells us. Norquist, whose livelihood depends on the sizeable GOP power base he maintains in part by directing donations to various candidates and organizations, doesn't take kindly to McCain trying to swipe his lunch money. Hence, feud.

When McCain, head of the Indian Affairs Committee, heard of Abramoff's misdeeds, he jumped at the chance to investigate them, knowing of Jack's ties to Norquist.

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It's all about the perks. Corporate jets, junkets...and you can add publicly funded luxury cars.

House members are provided the opportunity to lease cars on the taxpayers' dime, and Knight Ridder reports that many have taken full advantage of it. "Lexuses, Lincolns, Cadillacs, an Infiniti, even a BMW 530i" are among the spoils - the leases ran to over $1 million total last year. Curious as to who has the most expensive wheels? Here's a list. We were cheered to see Muckraker favorites Reps. Bob Ney (R-OH) and John Doolittle (R-CA) make the top ten with a Lincoln and Toyota Highlander, respectively. No word on who bagged the BMW.* (KR)

Justice Department Leaves Some Clues

The Justice Department pulled the financial disclosure records of several lawmakers and staffers involved in the Abramoff scandal last year, providing some confirmation of who interests them....

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Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) says she will make a "major announcement" regarding her campaign for Senate in Florida. Harris, who struggled for support throughout the race, has been dogged by questions regarding her involvement with a key figure in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery scandal.

She begged off an appearance at a GOP conference this weekend:

"While there has been much speculation in recent days concerning my campaign, and our party faces challenges in this mid-term election, I am confident with your dedication and commitment, we shall be victorious in November," Harris said.

"Unfortunately, I am unable to join you this weekend, as I prayerfully prepare with my family, friends and advisers to finalize the strategy for a major announcement next week concerning my candidacy for the U.S. Senate."

No time or place has been set for the announcement.