On Monday we noted a court filing made recently by defense lawyers for Mitchell Wade, the Duke Cunningham crony who's about to be sentenced in connection with his role in bribery scandal that felled the GOP congressman.

In arguing for a lenient sentence, Wade's lawyers claimed that their client had helped prosecutors' probe "at least five other members of Congress" who were under investigation for "corruption similar to that of Mr. Cunningham."

The blogger and Cunningham expert Seth Hettena named Katherine Harris, the former Florida congresswoman, and Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode as two of those members.

And now Hettena says he's identified the other three: Sen. Dan Inouye (D-HI), Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-WV), and Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA).

Hettena told Marcus Stern, the former San Diego Union-Tribune reporter who broke much of the Duke Cunningham story and now writes for Pro Publica, that those identifications are based on "information I developed and confirmed with two sources with knowledge of the investigation."

But what does all this amount to? According to Stern, perhaps not much. He writes:

No charges have been filed against any of the five lawmakers, and there is no evidence of any current criminal investigations against any of them. Lewis, Goode, Mollohan and Harris have all come up in the case before and have all denied wrongdoing. As for Inouye, we have called his office for comment. (We'll update the post as soon as we hear back.)

Stern also give us a rundown on what we already know about the alleged involvement of all of these lawmakers:

Lewis, former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, had been under investigation beginning in 2006 by the Office of the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles. That case, which focused on Lewis' role in helping lobbyist Bill Lowery get earmarks for his clients (including Cunningham co-conspirator Brent Wilkes), is cold without any charges being filed.

Goode and Harris both were beneficiaries of a combined $78,000 in illegal campaign contributions from Wade and helped Wade in his efforts to get multimillion-dollar military intelligence contracts through earmarks.

But prosecutors have repeatedly said there was no evidence the two lawmakers knew the contributions were illegal and they are not the targets of any current investigations. Harris left the House to pursue a quixotic and failed bid in 2006 to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. Goode is awaiting a recount in his 2008 House race, with the initial tally showing he narrowly lost.

Mollohan received $23,000 in campaign contributions and gifts to a family foundation from Wade's company, MZM Inc., and another firm that did business with MZM, Hettena wrote in his blog on Monday, adding that in October 2002, MZM gave $20,000 to Mollohan's Summit PAC. The legality of those contributions has never been challenged.

The link to Inouye, set to take over the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, is less clear but appears to involve the activities of one of Wade's co-conspirators, defense contractor Brent Wilkes, according to Hettena. There are no known allegations of misconduct against Inouye in connection with the Cunningham scandal.

But don't despair, fellow scandal junkies. Stern notes that a memo filed by prosecutors in the Wade case said that Wade had provided information for a "large an important corruption investigation" unrelated to the Cunningham matter.

Worth keeping an eye on...

While House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) presides over negotiations on the new surveillance bill, House Republicans have continued to push the Senate's version, which contains retroactive immunity for the telecoms, every which way they can.

Earlier this week, they tried to convince moderate Dems that it really was in their best interest (sub. req.):

"This is an opportunity for the 21 Blue Dog Democrats who signed a letter supporting the bipartisan, Senate-passed FISA bill to prove that they are serious about America's national security," said Michael Steel, House Minority Leader John Boehner's (R-Ohio) spokesman. "Will they choose to protect their constituents or will they back the Democratic leadership in kowtowing to trial lawyers and liberal special interests?"

Meanwhile, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) (yes, that Jerry Lewis) will try to tack on the Senate's bill to the war supplemental spending bill. As The Politico notes, the Dems on the appropriations committee will likely vote that down, but "at the very least, he would put members of the majority on the record rejecting the Senate bill, something Republicans have done repeatedly."

So far the moderate Dems have held strong to the Dem leadership's position that retroactive immunity is off the table. Hoyer has said that he hopes that negotiations will result in a new bill by late May. Regardless, the next showdown is likely to take place before August, when the wiretaps authorized under the Protect America Act will actually begin to lapse. So we'll see what happens then.

Yesterday on TPM, Josh noted a report (sub. req.) in The Recorder, a California legal news publication, that the U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles, Thomas O'Brien, had disbanded the office's public integrity unit.

The 17 attorneys in that section of the office "will be redistributed among the major fraud and organized crime sections, which now will have a mandate to battle corruption," the Recorder reported. The office's spokesman tried to put as bright a face on it as possible, saying "Our view is that it's a significant enhancement of the public corruption unit. We now have over 70 lawyers who essentially will be able to step up to the plate."

That's clearly some weak spin. But I asked a former prosecutor from the office's public integrity unit to give me a sense of what this means.

That former prosecutor didn't think the move was "politically motivated," instead attributing the move to a desire to improve the office's statistics. U.S. attorneys frequently experience pressure to increase the number of prosecutions as evidence of performance. Remember that Justice Department officials used former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam's lower immigration case numbers as justification for her firing (ignoring her office's concentration on busting illegal immigration rings). "Public corruption cases are very difficult and very time consuming," the former prosecutor explained. "A lot of that doesn't result in a statistic."

Of course, that doesn't mean that the cases don't have a disproportionate impact. "The fact of an investigation into the earmark process [i.e. the Duke Cunningham scandal and by extension the investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)]," really had a huge impact in opening up debate of how that process has been corrupted by money. That doesn't happen if you're not looking at it every day.

"My concern is the message that it sends," the lawyer continued. "The existence of the section, the fact that talented, smart, aggressive prosecutors are looking at cases, sends a message to public officials that they need to be careful." Now another message has been sent.

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Congratulations to Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) lawyers! They've surpassed $1 million in legal fees from the lawmaker.

Lewis, long-time TPMmers will remember, has been under federal investigation since the spring of 2006 for his ties to defense contractor and convicted criminal Brent Wilkes and lobbyist buddy Bill Lowery.

Since June of 2006, Lewis has paid just over $1 million in campaign funds to some heavy-hitters at the law firm Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher, according to campaign disclosures. A $62,000 payment on December 12th last year put him over the top.

The Lewis probe has reportedly slowed in the last year, and his fees reflect that -- Lewis spent $900,000 in 2006 and only about $100,000 this year. Maybe with the Wilkes conviction, things will heat up again?

Even with the Democrats in the majority and the FBI on his tail, he's still got it:

Senior Republican appropriators in the Senate have collected more money in earmarks than any other members of Congress, even though President Bush and GOP leaders have forcefully criticized “pork-barrel spending.”

Not only have these lawmakers defied their leaders, they have also taken a much greater share of the pot set aside for rank-and-file Republicans than have senior Democrats....

Sen. Thad Cochran (Miss.), ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, has collected $774 million worth of earmarks in 12 spending bills. After Cochran, Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska), the second-ranking Republican on Appropriations, secured more money for special projects than any other member of Congress: $502 million.

Not surprisingly, Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA) took the gold in the House. And the bronze went to Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), who's earmarking activities are also under investigation.

The investigation into Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) lives! Or at least investigators were doing some investigating this summer. Roll Call reports (sub. req.) that an FBI agent peeked at Lewis' personal financial records in July of this year, along with those of former aides.

The FBI also took a look at Rep. Ken Calvert's (R-CA) personal records, as they did once before, about a year ago.

The apparently stalled probe of Lewis has focused on his relationship to buddy and lobbyist Bill Lowery. Roll Call notes that the feds pulled records for two of Lowery's lobbyists, Jeffrey Shockey and Letitia White. Both once worked to Lewis, but moved over to work for Lowery. Shockey has since moved back to Lewis again. The feds also pulled records for Lewis' wife, his chief of staff Arlene Willis.

As for Calvert, it's unclear just what the feds are scrutinizing (one of his "honest graft" schemes?) or even if he's the focus of a full-blown investigation:

His trouble started last May, when the Los Angeles Times reported that he and a partner pocketed a profit of nearly a half-million dollars in less than a year on a land deal. The report found that while he owned the land, Calvert earmarked $1.5 million for commercial development nearby and $8 million for a freeway exchange 16 miles away.

About a week later, the California FBI agent pulled Calvert’s financial disclosure forms for 2000 through 2005. Calvert never retained legal counsel, but buzz over the issue compelled GOP leaders to skip over him last year when a slot opened on the Appropriations panel....

In July, a local FBI agent pulled Calvert’s financial disclosure forms for 2006 and 2007. Rudman said the lawmaker welcomes the scrutiny. “As far as we know, there is no investigation. He has no problems whatsoever and any time they want to look at any publicly available documents, that’s completely fine with him.”

Maybe the feds are just curious?

Considering the fallout from Monday's Brent Wilkes verdict, Josh wondered whether Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) might feel a bit unsettled. After all, no other lawmaker besides Duke Cunningham had a closer relationship to Wilkes than Lewis.

During the trial, Wilkes actually tried this tack as a self-defense, pointing to his relationship with Lewis, who for most of the relevant time period held the powerful position of chairman of the appropriations defense subcommittee, as far more important than his relationship with Cunningham. Sure, Cunningham was helpful, he said, but Lewis held the power. Lewis, of course, remains on the committee as its highest ranking Republican.

It was for that reason that Wilkes hired former GOP congressman Bill Lowery as a lobbyist. Lowery was old friends with Lewis and had set himself up as his "gatekeeper" after Lowery himself had left Congress. If you wanted Lewis to back your project, Lowery was the guy who made it happen (The San Diego Union-Tribune first laid out the extent of the entanglement in this excellent piece). So Wilkes paid Lowery up to $25,000 per month. And it was Lowery, unsurprisingly, who taught Wilkes the ropes in Washington back in the early 90's. Lowery's lobbying firm, Copeland Lowery (now called Innovative Federal Strategies), became a big player.

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The U.S. attorney office in Los Angeles just can't seem to muster the manpower needed to investigate senior Republican appropriator Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA). In fact, it seems that the Justice Department is handicapping itself.

The veteran prosecutor who'd been heading up the Lewis case has been forced into retirement, The Los Angeles Daily Journal reported yesterday (not available online). It knocks the investigation, already stalled, further off course.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that budget shortages and the departure of top prosecutors from the office had caused the investigation to slow down since last fall. But the Journal noted that the interim U.S. attorney George Cardona (the prior U.S.A. Debra Yang left last year under questionable circumstances) had tapped veteran prosecutor Michael Emmick in June to "jump-start" the investigation.

So much for that.

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Whatever happened to the federal investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)?

Finally, an answer. It's been stalled, reports Scot Paltrow in The Wall Street Journal, due partly to the departure of top prosecutors from the office (including former U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles Debra Yang) and partly to budget shortages. Paltrow's piece focuses mostly on those shortages in offices across the country, the often-forgotten backdrop to the U.S. attorney firings.

The last time we checked in on Lewis, prosecutors were focusing on his relationship with his lobbyist buddy Bill Lowery, whose firm's bread-and-butter business was cashing in on its relationship to Lewis (it continues to do well). But Paltrow reports that prosecutors had also hit another vein:

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Laura Rozen raises a good point. Three of California's four United States attorneys resigned in two months. Two of them we know were actually asked to step down on December 7th: San Diego's Carol Lam and San Francisco's Kevin Ryan.

But the other, Los Angeles' Debra Wong Yang, stepped down November 10th, just after the election. On January 1st, she left for the heavy-hitting law firm that just happened to be representing Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), who is being investigated by her office.

As Laura notes, "it's no secret that the decision to retire and a decision informed by knowledge one is going to be dismissed are sometimes the same thing.... Will Congress want to hear from her as well?"

The Wall Street Journal notes that, given the torrent of detail in yesterday's indictments against Brent Wilkes, those lawmakers other than Duke Cunningham who were uncomfortably close to him should be feeling mighty uncomfortable right about now:

The indictment and its details would seem to heighten the risk to other members of Congress still under investigation; Mr. Wilkes also had dealings with several of them.

A separate federal criminal investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis, the California Republican who until January 2006 was chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, is continuing in Los Angeles. Prosecutors in that case are looking at Mr. Lewis's relationship with Mr. Wilkes, which included campaign contributions from Mr. Wilkes and associates and the hiring by Mr. Wilkes of a lobbying firm founded by one of Mr. Lewis's closest friends, former Rep. Bill Lowery.

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), the longtime GOP appropriator who's facing a federal investigation as part of the Duke Cunningham scandal, dropped another $45,000 on legal fees in December, according to new documents filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Lewis, the highest-ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, has spent about $905,000 on legal fees so far. Ed. note: That's a lot of money.

Despite chairing the House panel which oversees the Justice Department budget, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) has sworn he won't meddle with the Feds' money, Congressional Quarterly reports (sub. req.) today.

Since Mollohan is the subject of an FBI investigation, that's probably a smart move.

Concerns were raised last November when it was noticed that Mollohan was poised to take the chairmanship of the Commerce Justice State Appropriations Subcommittee, from which he would hold of the purse strings for Justice and its law enforcement arm.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't see the big deal. "I think the Justice Department is looking into every member of Congress," she told a news crew last week. Mollohan, thankfully, was a little less myopic. “To make certain that there is no basis for criticism of my service on the CJS Subcommittee, I have decided to recuse myself from any related Justice Department accounts,” he wrote to colleagues in a letter obtained by CQ.

Meanwhile, the top Republican on the Appropriations committee is also under federal investigation, but he hasn't made any noises about recusing himself from meddling with the Justice Department budget. Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), the committee's ranking member, has blown over $800,000 in legal bills defending himself against aggressive investigators.

Ouch. Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), now the ranking member of the House appropriations committee, has paid out $861,000 in legal fees since learning in May he was under FBI scrutiny, the CREW blog reports.

Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) has run up bills totaling more than $117,000. And Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) has paid more than $70,000, according to CREW.

A man named Warren Trepp surfaced in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago, you may recall. The paper had investigated the Nevada defense contractor for his shady dealings with then-Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV).

Today's Las Vegas Sun puts Trepp's current flap in perspective. Apparently, the man has a history of attaching himself, Zelig-like, to no fewer than four disparate scandals in the past two decades:

Perhaps Warren Trepp is always just at the wrong place at the wrong time, a victim of terrible and perpetual coincidence.

By his early 30s, he was chief trader for the notorious 1980s junk bond trader Michael Milken.

Then a friend helped him sell a bundle of stock in a collectibles business in 2002, and he wound up selling it to Tom Noe, a Republican bigwig in Ohio recently convicted on multiple counts of fraud and larceny and laundering money to the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign.

Trepp formed the software company eTreppid Technologies that later sought national security contracts with the government. A woman, Letitia White, who did lobbying work for the firm is said to be under investigation in connection with the widening federal bribery probe following the conviction of a former congressman.

Finally, his friendship with Nevada Gov.-elect Jim Gibbons landed him on the front page of The Wall Street Journal in an examination of contracts that eTreppid received with help from Gibbons, the Republican congressman from Reno.

A Democratic spokesman for a member of the House Appropriations committee disagreed with comments from the Republican chairman, who said yesterday that the recent massive firing of the panel's fraud investigators was "bipartisan."

In a surprise move, House Appropriations chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) Monday fired all 60 of his panel's contract investigators. Sixteen permanent investigative staff were not affected by the action.

In a comment to Congressional Quarterly, Lewis spokesman John Scofield said the firings came because of a "bipartisan review" of the investigative unit. The review, he said, was supported by Rep. David Obey (D-WI), the top Democrat on the committee.

But an anonymous Democratic spokesman told ThinkProgress today that the firings were not okayed by Obey or other Democratic members of the committee. In fact, they weren't even consulted, he said.

Kirstin Brost, press secretary for David Obey, declined to comment for the record on the matter.

The effectiveness of the House Appropriations Committee's "I-Staff," as it is known, is unclear. Current and former staff from both sides of the aisle who are familiar with the group's reports say their quality was uneven. Lewis spokesman Scofield told CQ that "the work we’ve been getting as of late has not been that good."

"I never saw anything of value come out of them," Ronald Garant, a former contract investigator, said of the investigators working Katrina fraud claims. "I thought that was wasted time." Garant left the unit in March.

Update: An earlier version of the ThinkProgress post implied that the anonymous spokesman worked for Rep. Obey. A revised version identifies the commenter only as a "press spokesman," whose comments apply to all Democrats on the panel, not just Obey's office.

My goodness. As TPMm readers know well, House Appropriations chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) is under federal investigation for possible improprieties in how he oversaw Congress' spending of $900 billion annually. Yesterday, we reported that Lewis had dropped nearly $800,000 in legal fees to defend himself against the probe.

This evening, Congressional Quarterly reports (sub. req.) that in a round of calls Monday evening, Lewis fired 60 investigators who had worked for his committee rooting out fraud, waste and abuse, effective immediately. As in, don't bother coming in on Tuesday.

The investigators were contract workers, brought on to handle the extraordinary level of fraud investigations facing the panel. Sixteen permanent investigative staff are staying on, according to CQ. More:

Lewis’ decision “has in fact stalled all of the investigations on the staff,” said one of the contractors, a former FBI agent, who asked not to be identified. “This eviscerates the investigatory function. There is little if any ability to do any oversight now.”

. . .

“In effect, no investigative function is going to be done,” said the contractor, who called the decision “misguided.”

“This staff has saved billions and billions of dollars, we’ve turned up malfeasance and misfeasance,” the contractor said. “It’s results justify the expense of the staff. I have no idea why the chairman would do this.”

Lewis' spokesman, John Scofield, told CQ that such complaints were "sour grapes," and assured the publication that "there is nothing sinister going on."

Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), who's been under federal investigation since May for his ties to his friend, lobbyist Bill Lowery, has spent nearly $800,000 on legal fees since his troubles began.

He dropped $200,000 on a legal retrainer for his high-powered team back in June. Since then, he's paid out approximately $569,000 more, according to his most recent FEC filing.

The amount puts Lewis in the big leagues in terms of legal spending. Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), for example, who pled guilty earlier this month to accepting bribes from Jack Abramoff, has reported spending less than half as much on his lawyer. Former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), by contrast, has run up legal bills exceeding $2 million.

Lewis, of course, can afford to spend his campaign's dollars. He's coasting to reelection despite the investigation, and reports having $1 million in the bank.

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.

It's been awhile since you've heard about Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), the famed earmarker who's under federal investigation for his close ties to lobbyist Bill Lowery.

But today the AP reports that investigators are asking questions about a top contributor's land deal. Jack and Laura Dangermond donated a 41-acre, $2 million plot to the city of Redlands -- a plot which just happens to abut Lewis' home. The land was donated on the condition that it not be developed, a move that the AP points out "helps ensure property values remain high."

You know what's coming next. The Dangermonds run a government contracting firm called Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc., which has received at least $55.4 million in earmarks since 2004. The company is, of course, a client of Lewis friend Bill Lowery's lobbying firm -- a setup which won them a big fat subpoena from investigators back in June. To top off the cozy relationship, the Dangermonds have given at least $23,000 in political contributions to Lewis since 2001.

Funny thing -- the Dangermonds claim not to have known that Lewis would be affected by the land deal, and Lewis says he didn't know they had anything to do with it. Small world, huh?

I've had a couple days to digest the New York Times' lengthy article on congressional corruption, based largely on an unprecedented on-the-record interview with a man who has been identified as a major briber of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

It isn't the tell-all I'd like it to be. But the things Brent Wilkes didn't want to talk about are nearly as telling as those he discussed freely.

Wilkes, readers will recall, is the guy who is said to have thrown power-broker poker parties in the Watergate Hotel and elsewhere, some of which were said to feature congressmen and prostititutes. He was the man who's said to have trained Mitchell Wade in the art of the dirty deal -- Wade, of course, is the other identified Duke briber, and has been cooperating with prosecutors for months.

The piece, already notable for its revelations, becomes moreso when one notices it contains barely a passing mention of Cunningham, Wade, or the phantom prostitutes (none have yet been publicly identified).

Instead, Wilkes focuses the paper's attention on Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), now the powerful chair of the House Appropriations Committee, and Bill Lowery, the lawmaker-turned-lobbyist who, as a "gatekeeper" to Lewis and his earmark factory, supposedly kept the federal dollars flowing to a dozen Wilkes-run firms.

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Yesterday, we reported on the Copeland Lowery lobbying firms' remarkable success in winning earmarks for California State University, San Bernadino (CSU-SB).

One of the more entertaining emails we came across in reviewing the school's correspondence with their lobbyists was an exchange between a school official and Jeff Shockey, the firm's star lobbyist who's now under federal investigation as part of the probe into the firm's relationship with Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA).

Last fall, Copley News Service's Jerry Kammer -- who won a Pulitzer Prize for helping expose the Duke Cunningham scandal -- was sniffing around Shockey, his firm and its clients.

"This guy is really focusing in on my relationship with the university -- I can't quite figure it out," Shockey wrote to his university contact about Kammer.

"He does not understand eamarks," the school official moodily replied, "nor like them."

Three weeks later, Kammer broke the Lewis scandal with a raft of stories on Lewis and his lobbyist buddy Bill Lowery. Today, Lewis, Lowery and Shockey count themselves among the subjects of the spreading federal investigation into congressional corruption -- which began with, and has been buoyed by, Kammer's reporting.

Who doesn't understand the earmark process?

More difficult revelations about Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), the Appropriations Committee chairman.

In late 2002, Lewis delivered an $11,000 pay cut for one of his top aides -- and a personal family friend. Normally, such a move would be a stinging, painful rebuke -- but not in this case.

Instead, the pay cut allowed the aide, Letitia White, to narrowly dodge a law which would have barred her from lobbying Lewis for one year after leaving, Roll Call reports today. And lobbying Lewis is precisely what she did, just a few months later.

White is now under federal investigation, the New York Times reported in June.

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