{"id":6003,"date":"2005-12-06T09:45:41","date_gmt":"2005-12-06T14:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6003"},"modified":"2005-12-06T09:45:41","modified_gmt":"2005-12-06T14:45:41","slug":"maybe-theres-an-innocent-explanation-or-maybe-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/maybe-theres-an-innocent-explanation-or-maybe-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Maybe there’s an innocent explanation — or maybe not"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you’ve missed it elsewhere, the San Diego Union-Tribune ran a thorough review<\/a> of Duke Cunningham’s bribery scandal and his relationship with Defense contractor lobbyist Brent Wilkes. The U-T noted how the extent to which Wilkes, referred to as “co-conspirator No. 1” in the government’s Cunningham filings, would cater to those he hoped to influence.<\/p>\n

The plea agreement charged that in return for the payments, Cunningham “used his public office and took other official action to influence U.S. Department of Defense personnel to award and execute government contracts.”<\/p>\n

Wilkes befriended other legislators, too. He ran a hospitality suite, with several bedrooms, in Washington — first in the Watergate Hotel and then in the Westin Grand near Capitol Hill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This little tidbit of information prompted the National Journal, which is a respected non-partisan publication, to raise a few pertinent questions<\/a>, including:<\/p>\n

* Why does a lobbyist need a “hospitality suite with several bedrooms”?<\/p>\n

* Who uses those bedrooms and for what?<\/p>\n

These lobbying scandals involving Cunningham and Wilkes and Abramoff are looking more and more like a bad movie script every day. Except with one difference from the movies: this stuff actually happened.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a reasonable topic for discussion. I’ve heard about plenty of lobbyists who go out of their way to impress lawmakers, but I’m hard pressed to understand the need for “a hospitality suite, with several bedrooms” in two different DC hotels, including one “near Capitol Hill.” As Josh Marshall noted<\/a>, “After all, what possible need could congressmen and senators and their staffers have for access to private hotel suites near the Capitol registered in someone else’s name?”<\/p>\n

The next question for some enterprising reporter to explore: which lawmakers used<\/i> said hospitality suites?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you’ve missed it elsewhere, the San Diego Union-Tribune ran a thorough review of Duke Cunningham’s bribery scandal and his relationship with Defense contractor lobbyist Brent Wilkes. The U-T noted how the extent to which Wilkes, referred to as “co-conspirator No. 1” in the government’s Cunningham filings, would cater to those he hoped to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6003\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}