{"id":6324,"date":"2006-01-12T14:39:01","date_gmt":"2006-01-12T19:39:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6324"},"modified":"2006-01-12T14:39:01","modified_gmt":"2006-01-12T19:39:01","slug":"theres-an-investigation-but-harry-reid-isnt-part-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/theres-an-investigation-but-harry-reid-isnt-part-of-it\/","title":{"rendered":"There&#8217;s an investigation, but Harry Reid isn&#8217;t part of it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It seems like a pretty big deal. The Washington Times, a far-right newspaper created by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washtimes.com\/national\/20060110-115655-1555r.htm\">reported yesterday<\/a> that a Justice Department investigation into congressional corruption, stemming from Jack Abramoff, is focusing on a &#8220;first tier&#8221; of lawmakers and staffers. Specifically, five lawmakers, the Times said, are under scrutiny: Sens. Conrad Burns, Montana Republican; Byron L. Dorgan, North Dakota Democrat; and Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, along with Reps. J.D. Hayworth, Arizona Republican, and Bob Ney, Ohio Republican.<\/p>\n<p>This didn&#8217;t make a lot of sense. The three Republicans mentioned clearly have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thinkprogress.org\/abramoff\">an Abramoff problem<\/a> and the idea that they&#8217;re facing a criminal investigation would hardly come as a surprise. But the Dems mentioned haven&#8217;t done anything to warrant an investigation. Dorgan received support from the Choctaw Indians, but Dorgan was working with the tribe <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonmonthly.com\/archives\/individual\/2006_01\/007972.php\">long before Abramoff was stealing from them<\/a>. Indeed, there&#8217;s no evidence of Abramoff dealing with Dorgan at all, so the notion that the non-existent relationship would be the matter of a Justice Department probe was far-fetched, to put it mildly.<\/p>\n<p>And what about Harry Reid? The Las Vegas Review-Journal <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reviewjournal.com\/lvrj_home\/2006\/Jan-12-Thu-2006\/news\/5324874.html\">reports today<\/a> that the Washington Times is just plain wrong.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Justice Department is not focusing on Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada as part of an investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a source close to the probe said Wednesday in challenging a published report. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>[Reid] criticized the newspaper, which was founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church. &#8220;You have to really stretch things to call it a newspaper,&#8221; Reid said.<\/p>\n<p>Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen called the Washington Times story &#8220;completely baseless&#8230;. Senator Reid&#8217;s office has not been contacted by the Justice Department at all,&#8221; Hafen said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What do you know; the Washington Times&#8217; desperate attempt to make the Abramoff scandal a bi-partisan affair has turned out to be bogus. Who could have guessed?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It seems like a pretty big deal. The Washington Times, a far-right newspaper created by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, reported yesterday that a Justice Department investigation into congressional corruption, stemming from Jack Abramoff, is focusing on a &#8220;first tier&#8221; of lawmakers and staffers. Specifically, five lawmakers, the Times said, are under scrutiny: Sens. Conrad [&hellip;]<\/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-6324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6324","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=6324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}