Jack Abramoff

WaPo Forgets its Own Scandal Scoop?

Paul Kiel | January 23, 2007, 12:01PM

Does The Washington Post have a statute of limitations on crooked behavior by its sources?

Little more than a year after the Post reported on hypocritical behavior by a conservative activist, the newspaper is quoting him as an expert -- on whether such behavior is wrong.

In October of 2005, the Post's Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi told the story of how Jack Abramoff had used conservatives Ralph Reed and Rev. Louis Sheldon (whom Abramoff and his colleagues called "Lucky Louie") to kill an online anti-gambling bill on behalf of his client eLottery, a company that sold lottery tickets online. eLottery footed the bill, paying thousands to Reed and Sheldon. To secure Sheldon's help, Abramoff had eLottery cut a $25,000 check directly to the Sheldon's group, the Traditional Values Coalition.

Yet today, the Post seems to have forgotten Sheldon's hypocritical fundraising.

Post reporter John Solomon's story revealed that Newt Gingrich's conservative political group was jump-started by a $1 million contribution from a Las Vegas casino executive. To prove that this would raise hackles among the values set, he quoted Sheldon saying that accepting "income" from "a vice" was an "issue," and that "I certainly could never have done that and I certainly can't encourage it."

Except, well, he did, of course. Oddly, the piece references the Post's reporting on Reed's acceptance of gambling money, but is silent on Sheldon.

John Solomon

WaPo Editor on Solomon: What, Me Worry?

Paul Kiel | December 13, 2006, 3:08PM

This afternoon I spoke to the Washington Post's Susan Glasser, the paper's assistant managing editor for national news, about John Solomon's hiring.

Glasser was unwaveringly positive about Solomon, citing his "great mind, enthusiasm, zeal for an important subject" -- money in politics -- and calling him "one of the most distinctive assets that the Post has gained in the past few years."

She declined to discuss criticism of his reporting on incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). She "wasn't involved in those stories," she said, and didn't "have anything to say about them." She confirmed that concerns over his work on those stories was "not at all" an issue in his hiring, and emphasized that Solomon is an "extremely well-regarded, practiced, thoughtful, responsible, agressive reporter."

"You guys should be out there reading him closely and carefully, but this is a good thing, an exciting thing for us," Glasser added.

Glasser said that Solomon will be "a reporter covering money in politics" at the Post and will not be getting his own investigative unit, as stated in an AP internal memo about the hiring. "He’s going to be a reporter here at the Post, although I imagine a leader of our coverage," she said.

So there you have it. Don't worry, Susan, we will be reading him closely.

John Solomon

For AP, Solomon Breaks News (But Others Clean It Up)

Paul Kiel | December 13, 2006, 2:28PM

Allow us to ride our Solomon hobby horse a little more.

Yesterday, not long after The Washington Post announced that it had snagged the AP's John Solomon -- citing, among other things, his courageous exposure of Sen. Harry Reid's "ethical missteps," -- news came that the Senate ethics committee had cleared Reid for accepting free ringside seats from the Nevada Athletic Commission.

That ethics complaint, of course, had been spurred by one of Solomon's hit pieces on Reid, and the one, to our judgment, most riddled with inaccuracies and omissions that served to pump up Solomon's rather lame story.

But who doesn't get cleared by the congressional ethics committees nowadays?

Most interesting to us was the AP's story on the decision, which was written by the AP's Erica Werner -- not Solomon.

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John Solomon

Reader Asks WaPo: What's Up with Hiring Dem-Chasing AP Journo?

Paul Kiel | December 12, 2006, 2:37PM

From a chat at washingtonpost.com this morning with the Post's White House reporter Peter Baker:

Rochester, N.Y.: I'm sure you won't take this one, but it's worth a shot: is anyone in the newsroom concerned about the fact that the Post is hiring John Solomon (formerly of the AP), whose pieces on Harry Reid were widely criticized, not only in the blogosphere but also by media critics (such as your own Howard Kurtz)? Does his hiring mean we can look forward to more RNC-inspired hit pieces on Democratic leaders?

I'll bet your getting a lot of questions like this today. And I'll bet you won't take any of them.

Peter Baker: Old trick: "I bet you won't take this question cuz you're scared, nyah, nyah." (And by the way, glad to welcome back our friend in Rochester to these chats.) But the serious answer to your question is everyone I've talked with in the newsroom is absolutely thrilled that John Solomon is joining us from the Associated Press. John is one of the marquee names in political journalism and he's going to help us build the best accountability team in the business going into the 2008 election cycle. Has he been criticized by partisans in the blogosphere? Personally, I don't know, but who hasn't been? He wouldn't be doing his job as an investigative journalist if he didn't make some people squirm. John and the team he's led at the Associated Press have broken a lot of important stories without regard to political party; in addition to the ethical missteps of Senator Reid, he and his team exposed the Dubai ports deal that caused a huge civil war within the Republican party and uncovered the videotape showing what President Bush was told about Hurricane Katrina before it hit.

Many things I could point out about this response (nothing easier than painting critics with the broad brush of partisanship), but I'll settle for this: Baker, listing Solomon's accomplishments, notes the Dubai ports deal and the pre-Katrina Bush tape, both indisputably big stories, together with Solomon's stories on Reid. The paper also did this in their press release on the hiring.

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John Solomon

AP's John Solomon: The Story So Far

Paul Kiel | December 11, 2006, 4:02PM

A bit more about John Solomon, the long-time Associated Press investigative reporter who's been hired away by the Washington Post.

As we've catalogued here on TPMm and at TPM, Solomon -- a Washington-based muckraker -- likes to do hard-hitting pieces that expose corruption and wrongdoing among the government's elite. That much we applaud. However, a number of his pieces feature key distortions and omissions that serve to pump their conclusions up to the edge of what may have been supportable by the facts.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) has been a favorite target of Solomon's this past year. In February, Solomon wrote a story pulling the senior Democrat into the Abramoff mess. The piece repeatedly mentioned that an Abramoff associate lobbying Reid. Yet he did not mention that Reid voted against the measure Abramoff's team was pushing.

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John Solomon

WaPo Snags AP's Dem-Chasing Investigator

Paul Kiel | December 11, 2006, 2:23PM

As Josh just noted, John Solomon will be moving to The Washington Post, according to an internal AP memo leaked to TPM. The memo, which comes to us from a reliable source, reads:

John Solomon is departing at year's end for the Washington Post, where he will run an investigative unit. John has been a reporter, a news editor and investigative editor here over the last 15 years. His own reporting and his work with other Washington reporters has won awards and praise for the AP. We wish him well in his new challenge.

Our calls to the Post, the Associated Press, and John Solomon were not immediately returned.

For those who need reminding as to Solomon's curious predilection for chasing Democrats, here's an earlier TPM post explaining. And another.

Update: AP spokesman John Stokes confirms. "John Solomon is departing at year's end for the Washington Post," he wrote to us in an email that reproduces verbatim the memo we posted above.

Harry Reid

AP's Reid Story Doesn't Add Up

Paul Kiel | October 11, 2006, 11:10PM

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) "collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn't personally owned the property for three years," the AP reports.

Except that's wrong. Reid made a $700,000 profit on the sale, not $1.1 million. Also, the story, by the AP’s John Solomon, makes it sound as if Reid got money for land he didn't own. But that's not the case.

It’s not the first time that Solomon has published a misleading story about Reid. This is the third such story by Solomon over the past six months. Each time, Solomon has hit Reid for taking actions which might create the appearance of ethical impropriety. But because Solomon writes for the most powerful news organization in the land, these very gray-shaded stories pack a wallop. It doesn’t help that on numerous occasions, he has missed or distorted key details – missteps that help blow up his stories.

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Grover Norquist

More Bad News for Norquist

Justin Rood | June 24, 2006, 8:26PM

Courtesy of the AP's John Solomon:

Wanted: Face time with President Bush or top adviser Karl Rove. Suggested donation: $100,000. The middleman: lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Blunt e-mails that connect money and access in Washington show that prominent Republican activist Grover Norquist facilitated some administration contacts for Abramoff's clients while the lobbyist simultaneously solicited those clients for large donations to Norquist's tax-exempt group.

Come to think of it, this doesn't shine well for the administration, either. The selling of the White House, 2002?

The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

pauljustin | June 7, 2006, 7:53AM

Katherine Harris: Turtle-Lover, Friend of the Working Dog
Forget all the awful things you've heard about Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL). Did you know she loves animals? The New York Times is first with the scoop:

When a supporter. . . said he once witnessed Ms. Harris leave her vehicle to escort a turtle across a highway, [Harris] became gravely serious.

"All of my life I have stopped for turtles," [Harris] said firmly, even defensively, as if someone had challenged her commitment to turtle safety.

That's not all. If elected to the Senate, Harris vows to train seeing-eye dogs:

Ms. Harris explains that she intends to participate in a program that provides guide dogs for volunteers to train.. . . She will care for the dog for 18 months, spending nearly all her waking hours with it. "You can't let them sleep in bed with you," Ms. Harris said. "Which is going to be harder on me than the dog."

As the old saw goes, if you want a friend in Washington get a dog. And given the shabby way the White House and Beltway Republicans have treated her, getting a dog is probably a smart move for Harris. (NYTimes)

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Harry Reid

Solomon Vanquished Long List of AP Stories

Paul Kiel | June 6, 2006, 6:50PM

So what was John Solomon's competition at the AP for their weekly contest?

Below is the full text of the internal Associated Press email lauding Solomon for his work on the Reid story. This text includes the long list of stories deemed insufficiently controversial to deserve the editors' plaudits - like, for example, coverage of a riot in Kabul.

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Harry Reid

AP Rewards Solomon for Reid Reporting

Paul Kiel | June 6, 2006, 12:35PM

As Josh points out at TPM, the AP thought that John Solomon's reporting on Harry Reid was just swell. In the internal email sent out to AP staff announcing Solomon's award, this section jumped out at me:

The story and video won widespread play on the Web fronts and newspaper fronts, and stirred an enormous debate in the blogosphere, generating more than 10,000 postings and more than a dozen newspapers wrote editorials chastising Reid, including USA Today.

Hmm. Yes, that "enormous debate" in the blogosphere. As the author of eight of those 10,000 posts, I confess I'm surprised that it doesn't matter to editors at the AP that the debate was over the AP's reporting.

There's no such thing as bad publicity, apparently.

Harry Reid

AP Replies to TPMmuckraker Criticisms on Reid Story

Paul Kiel | June 2, 2006, 3:00PM

Wednesday evening I received a lengthy reply from the Associated Press responding to my criticisms of John Solomon's initial piece on Harry Reid - I called Solomon, who passed me off to AP's corporate media relations. The reply, unsurprisingly, is a mix of flat-out falsehoods and off-point rebuttals. But it's important that we reply, so I've posted it with my point-by-point response below.

First, let me just say that I would have gotten to this Wednesday night if Solomon hadn't followed up with a still more misleading story. That kept me pretty occupied until yesterday afternoon. So you won't find the issues from Solomon's follow-up addressed below. The reply deals strictly with Solomon's initial piece.

OK. But before I get into the nitty-gritty, let's not lose sight of the big picture.

We went after Solomon's piece for a simple reason. At a time when Congressional corruption is arguably worse than it has ever been, leading to a spreading net of criminal investigations, Solomon used the most powerful organ in the land to attack Harry Reid for what is at very most a minor ethical transgression. Solomon did not allege a quid pro quo. He did not even allege that Reid violated ethics rules. What he argued was that Reid should have avoided accepting the seats in order to "avoid the appearance he was being influenced by gifts." And remember the supposed influence here was from a governmental body with interest - but no demonstrated financial interest - in pending legislation.

You don't have to look far in Congress to find examples of Members who could have exhibited more exemplary behavior. As the conservative-leaning Las Vegas Review Journal wrote in an editorial, "on a scandal scale of 1 to 10, these free fight nights rate about a 2." To puff that story up into an 8 is just bad journalism.

Solomon excluded key exculpatory details that weakened his case. As is clear from the AP's response below, it wasn't that he'd failed to gather these details - it was that he decided readers didn't need to be bothered with them.

And I should mention that in his follow-up piece, the distortions got much worse.

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The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

pauljustin | June 2, 2006, 4:41AM

Brian Ross Crosses Mickey Mouse
Because of the report from ABC's investigative unit that House Speaker Dennis Hastert has attracted interest from federal investigators in the Abramoff matter, ABC's corporate parent is expecting headaches as it lobbies on unrelated legislation. In particular, Disney was pushing to roll back a provision in a recent tax bill that they project costs movie studios $180 million* over a decade. (WSJ)

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Harry Reid

AP's John Solomon - One More for the Road

Paul Kiel | June 1, 2006, 6:42PM

AP reporter John Solomon seems to think that the best defense is yet more bamboozlement.

Remember back to Solomon's initial version of his story on Harry Reid's acceptance of ringside boxing seats. Solomon claimed that Reid shouldn't have accepted them to avoid the appearance of impropriety. He didn't explicitly note that Reid actually voted against the guys who gave him the ringside seat credentials. But he didn't allege a quid pro quo either.

But now he seems to be saying that maybe it was a quid pro quo.

Check down in today's piece on Reid:

Reid told AP the free tickets did not influence his position, noting he voted for the legislation when it passed the Senate. However, Reid had forced a change in the bill that let the federal commission regulate the TV networks when they promoted fights. After the change, the House never approved the legislation.

For those of us who speak the English language these two sentences have a pretty straightforward meaning. Reid says the tickets didn't influence his position, "however", ergo, on the contrary, he pushed for this change about regulating TV networks. And "after the change" the House didn't approve the bill. Again, going by basic English, the pretty clear suggestion is that Reid's change had something to do with the bill not making it through the House.

In other words, Solomon is saying one of two things, or maybe both. Either the Commission -- the folks who gave Reid the credentials -- wanted this TV network change or maybe the TV network change was a poison pill, meant to torpedo the bill the House, a backdoor way of killing the legislation.

If there's some other way to understand Solomon's words, seriously, let us know.

I don't know much about boxing regulation. So I got on the phone to make some calls.

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Harry Reid

AP's Solomon Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Paul Kiel | June 1, 2006, 1:46PM

Oh my. John Solomon just keeps it comin'.

Via Greg Sargent, I see that John Solomon has rewritten the lead to his follow-up piece on Harry Reid. The distorting lead I pointed out yesterday has been replaced by a more narrative approach.

But he didn't stop there. And really, why should he? It's so much easier to cherry pick facts to boost your story than submit to the drudgery of countervailing details.

So here's another example of Solomon's bamboozlement. And, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to take you once again into the weedy specifics of this story. But it's worth it, believe me.

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Harry Reid

AP's Solomon Sucker Punches Reid

Paul Kiel | June 1, 2006, 2:01AM

John Solomon's at it again.

Tonight, the AP released a new story on Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). It purports to show Reid admitting that Solomon was right all along, that Reid mistated senate ethics rules when he initially defended himself against Solomon's piece -- and now he's coming clean.

We were pretty surprised to see Reid admit that. And as it turns out, he didn't.

Solomon just arranges the lead in such a way as to mislead readers into thinking Reid said something he didn't.

Going through all the details involves slogging through some minutiae. But it's worthwhile because it's a good illustration of Solomon's MO in his reporting about Reid: write a hit piece and then distort a follow-up response into looking like the target admitted you're right (he did a similar thing after his earlier story on Reid's ties to Jack Abramoff was undermined).

Solomon's piece begins with the following lead:

Reversing course, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid's office acknowledged Wednesday night he misstated the ethics rules governing his acceptance of free boxing tickets and has decided to avoid taking such gifts in the future.

99% of readers - and the AP has many, many readers - will read that lead paragraph and interpret it to mean that Reid has admitted that he misstated Senate ethics rules when he said they allowed him to accept the tickets. He's chastened and he's agreed not to do it again.

But as Solomon writes in his next paragraph, Reid still thinks it was "entirely permissible" to have accepted the tickets. It's hard to square that with Reid's admission, though, right?

Let's jump down into the details.

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Harry Reid

Confirmed: Against the Law for Reid To Pay for Credential

Paul Kiel | May 31, 2006, 3:46PM

OK, so we've nailed this down. It would have been against state law for Harry Reid to have reimbursed the Nevada Athletic Commission for credentials.

Clearly, this is pretty far down in the weeds. But the AP actually got a pretty significant fact wrong. So let me run through the details.

Bob Arum, the boxing promoter who gave the credentials to Reid and Sen. John McCain, made that claim to The Las Vegas Review Journal. But I wanted to check up on that, so I called Keith Kizer, the Executive Director of the Nevada Athletic Commission. Kizer should know - he is a lawyer and former Chief Deputy Attorney General for the state of Nevada.

"It would be illegal," Kizer said, explaining that it fell under a state law prohibiting agencies or individuals for charging access to government property. The credentials provide access to the commission's area near the ring. "It would be like charging someone for access to a senator's office," Kizer added with no apparent sense of irony.

He went on to explain that credentials are given out to governmental officials and others in order to observe the commission's activity. Sometimes the credentials are provided in addition to tickets - sometimes officials sit in the commission's area.

Reid's office, meanwhile, confirmed that Reid received a credential, and not a ticket to the bout: "We know it for a fact that he had a credential.”

I have written to the AP asking whether they planned on issuing a correction and was promised a reply "this afternoon." In his piece, John Solomon referred to Reid having received (reimbursable) "tickets" to the fight.

Harry Reid

AP: Reid Acted Unethically By Not Breaking the Law

Paul Kiel | May 31, 2006, 1:04PM

One more detail that the AP's John Solomon left out in his piece on Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

The crux of Solomon's story was that Reid acted wrongly by accepting free boxing tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission. In particular, Solomon focused on a title bout in September 2004 that Reid and McCain both attended. "Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., insisted on paying $1,400 for the tickets he shared with Reid for a 2004 championship fight," Solomon wrote.

But it turns out that it would have been illegal for Reid to reimburse the commission for the seats. That's because these weren't actually tickets - they were credentials with no face value given to V.I.P.'s. And according to the boxing promoter who awarded those credentials to Reid, it is illegal for the commission to accept payment for them. Despite that, McCain insisted on paying, and so the commission simply gave his check (written for a seemingly arbitrary amount) to a charity since it couldn't accept it.

What's more, that same promoter says that in other cases where Reid and McCain received tickets that could be reimbursed, Reid paid. That's a key fact which, if true, was left out of Solomon's article.

This from today's Las Vegas Review Journal, hardly a friendly paper to Reid:

[Marc Ratner, then executive director of the Nevada Athletic Commission] said Tuesday the seats Reid and McCain got weren't tickets available to the general public but "credentials" the commission gives only to public officials hoping to observe the commission's activity.

Skip Avansino, current chairman of the athletic commission and a commission member since 2002, said Reid, McCain and the athletic commissioners sat on folding chairs in a small, cramped area, not in the posh ringside seats for which pricey tickets are sold....

Boxing promoter Bob Arum said Reid and McCain also sat in ticketed seating at about three matches each but paid for their tickets "invariably." Arum said McCain and Reid's seats at the Hopkins-de la Hoya fight, on the other hand, were credentials from the commission, not tickets from Arum. But McCain, who brought his wife to the fight, sent Arum a check for the price of two ringside seats.

Arum said he didn't know what to do with the money.

"Those credentials cannot be sold," he said. "There's no price on them. (They are given to) governors, attorney generals, boxing commissioners of other states. ... It's illegal to accept money for a credential."

Arum said he couldn't accept McCain's money but McCain wouldn't take it back, so Arum donated it to Catholic Charities.

Harry Reid

CNN Juices AP's Story on Reid

Paul Kiel | May 30, 2006, 1:16PM

Last night, I pointed out the shortcomings of John Solomon's piece on Sen. Harry Reid (R-NV). Despite all that, I have to give Solomon a little credit for at least acknowledging in the second paragraph of his piece a key countervailing fact - that Reid was pushing and ultimately voted for a position counter to what the Nevada Athletic Commission wanted.

But this was apparently too even-handed for CNN.

Here's the second paragraph from the longer version of Solomon's story that ran off the wire:

Reid, D-Nev., took the free seats for Las Vegas fights between 2003 and 2005 as he was pressing legislation to increase government oversight of the sport, including the creation of a federal boxing commission that Nevada's agency feared might usurp its authority. (emphasis mine)

And here's the version of that paragraph as edited by CNN:

The Nevada senator took the free seats for Las Vegas fights between 2003 and 2005 from the Nevada Athletic Commission as he pressed legislation to increase federal oversight of boxing, including the creation of a government commission.

Do you see what's missing? The fact that Reid voted against the party he was allegedly influenced by apparently isn't worthy of mention.

Thanks to TPMm Reader G for the tip.

Late Update: Actually, this change came from the AP.

Harry Reid

AP: Reid Arguably Not Beyond Reproach

Paul Kiel | May 30, 2006, 12:25AM

If at first you don't succeed...

Back in February, the AP's John Solomon ran a lengthy piece detailing alleged contacts between Jack Abramoff's team at Greenberg Traurig and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). As Josh pointed out, although the article concentrated on the fact that Team Abramoff was lobbying Reid on behalf of sweatshop owners in the Northern Marianas, Solomon failed to note that Reid actually voted against the legislation Abramoff was pushing.

Well, Solomon has written a new piece purporting to illustrate still more of Reid's ethical improprieties. He's managed to actually make a weaker case than in his last story.

Here's the central allegation:

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid accepted free ringside tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission to three professional boxing matches while that state agency was trying to influence him on federal regulation of boxing.

That sounds pretty bad.

Only, there is an exception for gifts from governmental agencies (like the Nevada Athletic Commission) in the Senate ethics rules. So there is nothing untoward about Reid having accepted the free tickets.

But it would still seem pretty bad if Reid had accepted the tickets and then stumped shamelessly for the commission.

Only, he didn't. As was the case with Abramoff and the Marianas, Reid voted against the peddler's interest. As Solomon admits in the piece, Reid was advocating "the creation of a federal boxing commission that Nevada's agency feared might usurp its authority." Reid never changed his position. And this was a dramatically uncontroversial piece of legislation largely preoccupied with ensuring the safety of boxers by creating the United States Boxing Administration. It passed the Senate unanimously.

Now, Solomon puts all these facts in his piece. So he's not covering up a key piece of information like he did last time. He seems to realize that he doesn't have any real story. So Solomon argues that Reid, out of an abundance of caution, should have paid for the tickets to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

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