If this were a Republican, I’d probably be apoplectic, so I thought it only fair to mention that Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) appears to have made an awful mistake.
Amid the chaos and confusion that engulfed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck, a congressman used National Guard troops to check on his property and rescue his personal belongings — even while New Orleans residents were trying to get rescued from rooftops, ABC News has learned.
On Sept. 2 — five days after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast — Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., who represents New Orleans and is a senior member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, was allowed through the military blockades set up around the city to reach the Superdome, where thousands of evacuees had been taken.
Military sources tells ABC News that Jefferson, an eight-term Democratic congressman, asked the National Guard that night to take him on a tour of the flooded portions of his congressional district. A five-ton military truck and a half dozen military police were dispatched.
Lt. Col. Pete Schneider of the Louisiana National Guard tells ABC News that during the tour, Jefferson asked that the truck take him to his home on Marengo Street, in the affluent uptown neighborhood in his congressional district. According to Schneider, this was not part of Jefferson’s initial request.
Given the broader context, the controversy looks even worse. Jefferson is currently the subject of an FBI investigation (his New Orleans and DC homes were searched in August), in which he’s accused of pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars from a start-up technology firm. When Jefferson emerged from his home on Sept. 2 with, according to the ABC report, “a laptop computer, three suitcases, and a box about the size of a small refrigerator,” it made a bad situation look worse.
Nevertheless, as Roll Call reported today, Jefferson is mounting an aggressive defense and insists the ABC segment was wrong.
In an interview, Melanie Rouffell, a Jefferson spokeswoman, reiterated her boss’s belief that the story was unfair, noting that National Guard officials refused to let the Congressman tour the devastated area without the presence of armed guards.
She said that Jefferson was only doing his job by trying to assess the damage in his district and that he was concerned about his neighbors, whom he knew had not evacuated their homes.
“There is no story,” Rouffell said. “There’s no misuse of anything. If he had been able to tour the city on his own, he would have done so. And he would have preferred to.”
Jefferson, in other words, wanted to see the damage done to his community, but officials insisted that he receive a National Guard escort. As for the belongings he retrieved, Jefferson’s office said the ABC report was mistaken and that the lawmaker simply picked up his daughter’s laptop and a few suitcases with things belonging to his family.
Whatever the details, I think Dem leaders are right to be cautious about going out too far on a limb to defend Jefferson on this.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he “doesn’t know much about” the August searches of Jefferson’s home, office and vehicle, aside from the fact that an investigation is ongoing.
But the Maryland Democrat said that “if somebody has acted unethically or committed criminal offenses, we need to hold them accountable.”
“Let’s see what the facts are,” Hoyer said later. “But if the facts are such that there is an ethical violation or there is a criminal violation, then I think it is appropriate for the ethics committee and for perhaps the Congress to act, period, whether it is a Democrat or a Republican.”
Sounds right to me.