More Republican Corruption

[Brian Rucker]

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 - A spokesman for Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, said Thursday that the Securities and Exchange Commission had contacted Mr. Frist's office about the sale in June of his shares in HCA, the giant hospital company founded by his family.

Mr. Frist, whose brother Thomas F. Frist Jr. is chairman emeritus and the largest individual shareholder of the company, disclosed earlier this week that on June 13 he asked the managers of blind trusts controlling many of his assets to sell any of his remaining shares in HCA.

The sales occurred just as the share price reached a new peak and shortly before the company's announcement in mid-July of lower-than-expected quarterly results sent the price tumbling.

Mr. Frist, the Senate majority leader and a potential presidential candidate, initially placed more than $10 million in shares of the company in his trusts, but his spokesman said he could not determine how much remained at the time of the sale.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/23/politics/23frist.html

[MarchHare]

Martha Stewart got jailtime for insider-trading. I wonder what Frist, if found guilty, will get?

[Houngan]

Martha Stewart got jailtime for insider-trading. I wonder what Frist, if found guilty, will get?

Would anybody argue that Bill Frist isn't more of a danger to the public than Martha Stewart? To the pokey with him!

H.

[Dirt]

Martha Stewart got jailtime for insider-trading. I wonder what Frist, if found guilty, will get?
A slap on the wrist for Frist!

[Brian Rucker]

Here's another Abramoff article. Not sure if anyone reads my mega-clip threads so I'll stick it here on a relatively fresh one.

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The widening investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff is moving beyond the confines of tawdry influence-peddling to threaten leading figures in the Republican hierarchy that dominates Washington.

This week's arrest of David Safavian, the former head of procurement at the Office of Management and Budget, in connection with a land deal involving Abramoff brings the probe to the White House for the first time.

Safavian once worked with Abramoff at one lobbying firm and was a partner of Grover Norquist, a national Republican strategist with close ties to the White House, at another. Safavian traveled to Scotland in 2002 with Abramoff, Representative Robert Ney of Ohio and another top Republican organizer, Ralph Reed, southeast regional head of President George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who once called Abramoff ``one of my closest and dearest friends,'' already figures prominently in the investigation of the lobbyist's links to Republicans. The probe may singe other lawmakers with ties to Abramoff, such as Republican Senator Conrad Burns of Montana, as well as Ney.

``These people all shared transactions together,'' said former House Democratic counsel Stan Brand, now a partner in the Washington-based Brand Law Group. ``That's always something that worries defense lawyers.''

Nervous Republicans

Some Republicans acknowledge they are nervous. ``Sure there's a concern,'' said former Representative Jack Quinn of New York, who's now president of Cassidy & Associates, a Washington lobbying firm. ``But like everyone else, we have to wait and see where the investigation goes.''

Abramoff, 46, a top fund-raiser for Bush's re-election campaign, is under investigation by a government task force consisting of the Justice Department's public integrity section, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Interior Department's inspector general. The Senate Indian Affairs Committee is conducting another inquiry.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=IN7A1S0UQVI9

And the Rove angle:

Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff bragged two years ago that he was in contact with White House political aide Karl Rove on behalf of a large, Bermuda-based corporation that wanted to avoid incurring some taxes and continue receiving federal contracts, according to a written statement by President Bush's nominee to be deputy attorney general.

Timothy E. Flanigan, general counsel for conglomerate Tyco International Ltd., said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that Abramoff's lobbying firm initially boasted that Abramoff could help Tyco fend off a special liability tax because he "had good relationships with members of Congress," including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

Abramoff later said "he had contact with Mr. Karl Rove" about the issue, according to the statement by Flanigan, who oversaw Tyco's dealings with Abramoff and his firm and received reports from Abramoff about progress in the lobbying campaign. Flanigan's statement is the latest indication that Abramoff promoted himself as having ready access to senior officials in the Bush administration.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=IN7A1S0UQVI9

[shift6]

Martha Stewart got jailtime for insider-trading.
No she didn't. She got jailtime for lying to an investigator.

[Qenan]

Thereby proving she should have kept her mouth shut and not cooperated. I'm not a Martha Stewart fan, but busting her for that isn't going to convince others to cooperate with investigators.

[Euri]

Martha Stewart got jailtime for insider-trading.
No she didn't. She got jailtime for lying to an investigator.

Thank you. I was just about to point this out.

[Jasper]

So now the Republican leaders of both the House and Senate are under serious investigation for corruption? Plus Rove, and some smaller scandals.

Are there any honest Republicans left? If so, where is their hue and cry?

[Daydreamer]

McCain for one, though no matter how loud he shouts nobody who matters seems to listen...

[Euri]

McCain doesn't seem corrupt, but he's also a lickspittle. Fuck him. Fuck Republicans.

[Jasper]

McCain is spineless. What exactly has he done to fight the swell of Republican unaccountability? Even after getting smeared by the Rove machine et al he still toes the line. I have no respect for a man who lets himself be treated like such a tool.

[VegasRobb]

McCain is spineless. What exactly has he done to fight the swell of Republican unaccountability? Even after getting smeared by the Rove machine et al he still toes the line. I have no respect for a man who lets himself be treated like such a tool.

Not "even after", just after. He was running a "change things from within" campaign until the smear campaign. *Then* he rolled.

[Donald L.]

McCain is spineless. What exactly has he done to fight the swell of Republican unaccountability?

Yeah, disappointed in McCain. Maybe the eleventh commandment is ingrained in him "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican".

[Enidigm]

McCain made a political gamble, though it was the safe and obvious one. He saw the Republicans as a runaway express train and thought it best to get, and stay on, while he could (still being a Republican). Even if he was more or less opposed to most of their legislation. Better to be submissive than to be road kill. Don't try to keep the tide from coming in. ect.

Well, he lost. If he had switched parties 4 or 8 years ago i think you'd have a pretty strong candidate today. Now he is an outcast within the party, lost all the respect of those outside the party, and a lame duck candidate hated in his own state and elected by sheer inertia.

[Brian Rucker]

Is it 1994 all over again?

Dark and ominous clouds are gathering over the Republican party these days, with a series of ethical and legal scandals that threaten to further damage a White House and Congress already reeling from a sharp drop in public approval ratings.


Rep. Tom, Delay (Tex.), Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.), and a top administration official (David Safavian, chief of staff of the General Services Administration) have all been ensnared in highly embarrassing ethics scandals recently.

The latter two scandals touch, in some way or another, on a broadening scandal involving a former top lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, who was thoroughly connected among GOP politicians and activists.

For more background:

Frist Says He Had No Inside Data On Stock (Washington Post, Sept. 27, 2005)

Frist, DeLay Fend Off Probes Into Ethics (ABC News, Sept. 23, 2005)

Bush Official Arrested in Corruption Probe (Washington Post, Sept. 20, 2005)

On top of all of that, a special prosecutor and grand jury continue to investigate what, if any, role White House officials may have played in the leaking of the name of a covert operative to reporters. And the White House has come under increasing scrutiny, in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina fiasco, for rampant cronyism in its appointments to top level jobs, including the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Immigration and Naturalization service, deputy attorney general, among others. (Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles Times comments on this here).

In many ways, today's scandals echo many of the issues that Democrats ran into prior to the GOP revolution of 1994. Corruption and scandal engulfed Democrats, leading to the demise of the party that year. Dan Rostenkowski was indicted on corruption charges and later resigned his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee. Five years earlier, House Speaker Jim Wright resigned in an ethics scandal. That same year, another powerful congressman, Tony Coehlo of California, resigned amid allegations that he received special treatment in a junk bond deal.

"This reminds me of 1994," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a watchdog group. "The house Democrats had been in control for 40 years and were incredibly arrogant and had all kind of ethical scandals...the House bank scandal, the Rostenkowski scandal. Jim Wright.

"[The Democrats] lost in large part because of the ethics problems. Now only 11 years later, we have the Republicans acting just like the Democrats and maybe even worse. Worse yet, they're acting like nobody cares even though their approval rating is only 36 percent, a low comparable to the '94 approval rating [of the Democrat-controlled Congress]."

The GOP scandals come just a year before crucial midterm elections that could decide whether the party will continue its dominance in Washington, or fold, under the stain of ethical humiliation as Democrats did in 1994.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092700831.html

[Brian Rucker]

Okay, I've been posting quite a bit today but there's just so much fucked up shit going on. Anyhow this adds some new spicy, spicy, hot sauce to the Abramoff situation. Now think about this - here's a guy as connected as you can get inside The Republican Party. And here's how he does business. You have to wonder what's going on that we never find out about.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - Two men were arrested and charged with the Mafia-style killing of the founder of the Miami Subs sandwich chain, unsolved for more than four years, a law enforcement official said Tuesday.

Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis was ambushed after he left his office in Fort Lauderdale on Feb. 6, 2001. Boulis, who was involved in a business dispute with prominent Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff at the time, was shot to death after two cars stopped him.
Anthony Ferrari, 46, was taken into custody at his North Miami Beach home Monday evening, The Miami Herald reported. He was being held at the Broward County Jail, sheriff's spokesman Jim Leljedal said.

Fort Lauderdale homicide detectives arrested Anthony Moscatiello, 67, at his home in New York late Monday. A state law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the arrests.

Both men were charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation to commit murder, the paper reported. They were scheduled to appear in court Tuesday.

Boulis, 51, also founded SunCruz Casinos, a gambling fleet whose sale led to charges last month against Abramoff, a key figure in investigations involving House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

The indictment, returned Aug. 11 by a grand jury in Fort Lauderdale, charges that Abramoff and an associate, 36-year-old New York businessman Adam Kidan, used a fake wire transfer to defraud two lenders out of some $60 million to finance the deal to buy SunCruz from Boulis.

The slaying of Boulis came amid bitter legal fighting over the sale, including a physical altercation between Kidan and Boulis.
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.asp

[Squirrel Killer]

For those wondering how Ferrari and Moscatiello were connected to Abramoff, you can get that here (http://www3.cjad.com/content/cp_article.asp?id=/global_feeds/CanadianPress/WorldNews/w092755A.htm):

Court papers filed in connection with the legal dispute over SunCruz allege that Kidan paid Ferrari $95,000 for unspecified reasons and paid Moscatiello, through his daughter, $145,000 for his work as a food and beverage consultant at SunCruz.

Kidan was Abramoff's "associate." One would hope that Ferrari and Moscatiello would be offered some sort of plea (although not too light, since they did assassinate a guy) in order to flip on Abramoff' and Kidan.

[curst]

McCain doesn't seem corrupt, but he's also a lickspittle. Fuck him. Fuck Republicans.

I've always been mistrustful of the guy since the Keating Five scandal. I'll admit that part of it was my father getting on my case severely for ever getting on the McCain bandwagon, since his role in that episode seems rather small, but it sure convinced me that he wasn't the squeaky-clean take-no-shit guy everyone portrayed him as back in the '00 elections.

[Andrew Mayer]

McCain is spineless. What exactly has he done to fight the swell of Republican unaccountability?

Cake!

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/images/20050829-5_p082905pm-0125-515h.jpg

[Troy S Goodfellow]

McCain doesn't seem corrupt, but he's also a lickspittle. Fuck him. Fuck Republicans.

I've always been mistrustful of the guy since the Keating Five scandal. I'll admit that part of it was my father getting on my case severely for ever getting on the McCain bandwagon, since his role in that episode seems rather small, but it sure convinced me that he wasn't the squeaky-clean take-no-shit guy everyone portrayed him as back in the '00 elections.

McCain has always been very forthcoming about the Keating Five stuff and has mea culpa-ed a number of times. It was his involvement there, I believe, that made him a zealot for campaign finance reform and curbing corruption in government. When asked about it, he never denied his involvement, accepts his role in it (very minor) and doesn't dodge questions. Even in the 2000 campaign.

Troy

[Daydreamer]

Now he is an outcast within the party, lost all the respect of those outside the party, and a lame duck candidate hated in his own state and elected by sheer inertia.

As much as I agree that McCain's support of Bush, despite his criticisims, has seriously hurt his chances, I call BS on this. You can't pull 85-90% in elections and straight 80%+ approval ratings by being hated, especially in a state thats 40%ish blue and getting bluer by the day from the growing Hispanic population. Hes lost some serious cred, but I doubt many hate him.

[MatthewF]

What does being elected by "sheer inertia" mean anyway?

[Glenn]

I think he meant re-elected by sheer inertia.

[Daydreamer]

He WAS re-elected by 85-90% of the voters. Most incumbents generally manage 65-70% in their (on average) more lopsided states (California for example), if I remember correctly.

[Jason McCullough]

McCain is the prime bit of evidence for "you can get away with disagreeing with your constituents a lot if you're personable and don't lie much."

[Brian Rucker]

WASHINGTON - The Texas grand jury investigating House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's state political organization was completing its term Wednesday after demonstrating a recent interest in conspiracy charges that could bring more indictments.

Lawyers with knowledge of the case said the DeLay defense team was concerned that the Travis County grand jury might consider counts of conspiracy to violate the state election code.

Their concern was triggered when similar charges were handed down two weeks ago in an expanded indictment against two DeLay political associates. The associates were accused of conspiring to violate the state election code by using corporate donations for illegal purposes.

House GOP rules require any member of the elected leadership to step down temporarily if indicted, and it would be up to the rank and file to select an interim replacement. Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., could make a recommendation, whether choosing to elevate another member of the leadership or tapping an alternative to reduce the possibility of a struggle if DeLay were cleared and then sought to reclaim his post.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050928/ap_on_go_co/delay_investigation

[Brian Rucker]

"A stench of corruption"

Over the course of the summer, Howard Dean worked hard to get voters to associate the Republican Party with a "culture of corruption" in Washington. The message didn't get much traction then -- in part because Democrats in Congress didn't push if out of fear that it would come back to bite them, and in part because voters had bigger concerns about George W. Bush and the party he leads.

The message is getting through today.

Just after news of Tom DeLay's indictment broke this afternoon, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan appeared for his daily press briefing, where a reporter asked him on live television if a "stench of corruption" now swirls around the president and his party. McClellan dismissed the question as relying on a "broad characterization" but acknowledged that there are "instances" and "individual situations" where "the legal process" will need to proceed.

That's certainly fair to say.

From Texas to Florida to Ohio, from K Street to Congress to the inner circles of the Bush administration itself, the Republican Party is suddenly -- or maybe not so -- looking like the party of scandal. You can't keep up without a scorecard. Here's ours.

Tom DeLay: The House majority leader was indicted today on a felony charge that he conspired to launder corporate campaign contributions through the national Republican Party in Washington and back to legislative candidates in Texas.

Bill Frist: The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are both investigating the Senate majority leader's sale of shares in his family's healthcare business just before the stock's value plummeted in June.

Jack Abramoff: The Republican super-lobbyist, known to have bragged about his contacts with Karl Rove, was indicted in Texas last month on wire fraud and conspiracy fraud charges related to their purchase of a a fleet of gambling boats. This week, three men were arrested -- including two who received payments from Abramoff's business partner -- in the Mafia-style killing of the man from whom Abramoff and his partner purchased the gambling boats.

David Safavian: The president's chief procurement officer stepped down two weeks ago and was arrested last week on charges of lying to investigators and obstructing a separate federal investigation into Abramoff's dealings in Washington. Some Republicans who received campaign contributions from Safavian are divesting themselves of his money now.

Timothy Flanigan: The president's nominee to serve as deputy attorney general has announced that he will have to recuse himself from the Abramoff investigation if he is confirmed because he hired Abramoff to help the company where he works -- scandal-ridden Tyco International Ltd. -- lobby DeLay and Rove on tax issues.

Michael Brown: The president's FEMA director resigned earlier this month amid complaints about his handling of Hurricane Katrina and charges that he and other FEMA officials got their jobs based on political connections and cronyism rather than competence or qualifications.

Bob Taft: The Republican governor of Ohio pleaded guilty last month to criminal charges based on his failure to report gifts as required by state law, among them golfing trips paid for by Tom Noe, a major Republican fundraiser who is the subject of his own scandal regarding the state's investment in $50 million in rare coins, some of which have mysteriously gone missing.

And then there's Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. The grand jury investigating the outing of Valerie Plame is scheduled to complete its work in late October. While neither Rove nor Libby is apparently a "target" of the investigation -- and while the "corruption" in Plamegate is moral rather than financial -- both men are known to have played a role in revealing or confirming Plame's identity in conversations with reporters, which may be a crime under federal law.
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/

[MatthewF]

http://tinyurl.com/77h6p

WASHINGTON - Outside the blind trusts he created to avoid a conflict of interest, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist earned tens of thousands of dollars from stock in a family-founded hospital chain largely controlled by his brother, documents show.

The Tennessee Republican, whose sale this summer of HCA Inc. stock is under federal investigation, has long maintained he could own HCA shares and still vote on health care legislation without a conflict because he had placed the stock in blind trusts approved by the Senate.

However, ethics experts say a partnership arrangement shown in documents obtained by The Associated Press raises serious doubts about whether the senator truly avoided a conflict.

In that case, the HCA stock was accumulated by a family investment partnership started by the senator's late parents and later overseen by his brother, Thomas Frist. The brother served as president of the partnership's management company and as a top officer of HCA. Sen. Frist holds no position with the company.

The senator's share of the partnership was placed in a Tennessee blind trust between 1998 and 2002 that was separate from those governed by Senate ethics rules. Frist reported Bowling Avenue Partners, made up mostly of non-public HCA stock, earned him $265,495 in dividends and other income over the four years.
...

Frist advisers confirmed the senator's brother could influence investment decisions in the Bowling Avenue partnership and said the partnership was placed in a Tennessee trust because Senate ethics rules didn't allow the non-public HCA shares to be included in Senate-approved trusts.

[Brian Rucker]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has been subpoenaed to turn over personal records in an investigation into possible insider trading, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued the subpoena within the past two weeks, the newspaper reported, citing sources familiar with the probe.

A spokesman for Frist, a Tennessee Republican, was not immediately available for comment.

Frist aides previously said he had been contacted by regulators but did not mention that he had received a formal request for documents, The Washington Post said.

Authorities are looking into Frist's recent sale of shares of hospital operator HCA Inc. (Research), co-founded by Frist's father and brother. The sales took place just days before HCA's stock price fell on a disappointing July 13 profit outlook.
http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/13/news/newsmakers/frist_hca.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes

Over the next year, we're going to have alot of conservatives listening to alot of liberals saying "I told you so" on a whole host of issues whether it's about habitual Republican corruption and dishonesty or more specific issues like Iraq (and how we got into it) or Bush's lack of intellectual heft. What I'm really curious about is whether the response will be that of David Brooks "I'm beginning to think this is the Stepford [party] out to make a mockery of everything I really believe in" or will it be more Limbaughian "LALALALALA. I can't hear you."