The San Diego Union-Tribune and Josh Marshall got the ball rolling on this the past couple of days, but in case you haven’t heard, Rep. Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham (R-Calif.) seems to have quite a controversy on his hands.
A defense contractor with ties to Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham took a $700,000 loss on the purchase of the congressman’s Del Mar house while the congressman, a member of the influential defense appropriations subcommittee, was supporting the contractor’s efforts to get tens of millions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon.
Mitchell Wade bought the San Diego Republican’s house for $1,675,000 in November 2003 and put it back on the market almost immediately for roughly the same price. But the Del Mar house languished unsold and vacant for 261 days before selling for $975,000.
Meanwhile, Cunningham used the proceeds of the $1,675,000 sale to buy a $2.55 million house in Rancho Santa Fe. And Wade, who had been suffering through a flat period in winning Pentagon contracts, was on a tear — reeling in tens of millions of dollars in defense and intelligence-related contracts.
In an interview Wednesday, Cunningham conceded that the circumstances surrounding the transaction could raise “fair” questions, but he insisted that the real estate deal was legitimate and independent of his efforts to help Wade win contracts.
Going through the details, it looks pretty bad. Cunningham, a senior member of the House Appropriations and Intelligence committees, had an obvious conflict of interest, but nevertheless used his position in the House to award highly lucrative contracts to a defense contractor who effectively gave him a $700,000 gift. Larry Noble, director of the Center for Responsive Politics, said the story points to possibly illegal gifts, or “if this transaction was in essence a payment to Cunningham for his help in getting contracts, then you’d be talking about official bribery.”
It’s nice of Cunningham to acknowledge that the circumstances of this mess raise “fair” questions, because Dems are already raising a few.
Democrats are calling for a full-scale investigation of Rep. Duke Cunningham’s (R-Calif.) sale of his San Diego home to a defense contractor. […]
Democrats immediately pounced on the news of Cunningham’s home sale, suggesting it was a sweetheart deal structured to improperly benefit the eight-term lawmaker.
“It looks like a bribe from this distance,” said Bob Mulholland, communications director for the California Democratic Party. “It smells, and hopefully the Congressional ethics committee will take this issue up.”
Jennifer Crider, press secretary for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), used the controversy around Cunningham’s home sale to both bash Cunningham and prod Republican leaders to break a six-week stalemate within the ethics committee over staffing. The ethics panel has not been able to undertake any investigative work this session as GOP and Democratic leaders have struggled over ethics rules and staff makeup.
“This is precisely the sort of allegation that a non-partisan, functioning Ethics Committee would consider: Did Mr. Cunningham receive an illegal gift and or violate provisions of the criminal code that prohibit the receipt of something of value in return for official action? Or was this a fair market value home sale?” Crider wrote in an e-mailed statement. “Republicans should immediately stop blocking the Ethics Committee’s organization and allow the Committee to do its work.”
Though the Union Tribune broke the story over the weekend, the rest of the media, so far, has largely ignored the Cunningham controversy. The report in Roll Call, however, coupled by the Dems’ demands for an investigation, could make this a pretty interesting scandal that should generate some interest from political reporters.
Stay tuned.