{"id":7384,"date":"2006-05-11T13:04:23","date_gmt":"2006-05-11T17:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7384"},"modified":"2006-05-11T13:04:23","modified_gmt":"2006-05-11T17:04:23","slug":"its-quite-a-caucus-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/its-quite-a-caucus-2\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s quite a caucus"},"content":{"rendered":"

The list of Republicans lawmakers facing criminal investigations was already pretty long (DeLay, [tag]Cunningham[\/tag], Ney, Frist), but we can now add another<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors have begun an investigation into Rep. [tag]Jerry Lewis[\/tag], the Californian who chairs the powerful House Appropriations Committee, government officials and others said, signaling the spread of a San Diego corruption probe.<\/p>\n

The U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles has issued subpoenas in an investigation into the relationship between [tag]Lewis[\/tag] (R-Redlands) and a Washington lobbyist linked to disgraced former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Rancho Santa Fe), three people familiar with the investigation said.<\/p>\n

The investigation is part of an expanding federal probe stemming from Cunningham’s conviction for accepting $2.4 million in bribes and favors from defense contractors, according to the three sources.<\/p>\n

It is not clear where the investigation is headed or what evidence the government has. But the probe suggests that investigators are looking past Cunningham to other legislators and, perhaps, the “earmarking” system that members of Congress use to allocate funds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s as bad as it sounds. As one source told the LA Times<\/a>, Lewis used his position as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, one of the most powerful posts in Congress, to earmark “hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts” for clients of his longtime friend, [tag]Bill Lowery[\/tag], a lobbyist tied to defense contractor Brent [tag]Wilkes[\/tag], best known for bribing Duke Cunningham. In fact, the LAT reported earlier this week that Lewis helped kill a major weapons program to help benefit Wilkes.<\/p>\n

Josh Marshall summed this up<\/a> nicely.
\n<\/p>\n

Now, maybe I’m just cynical. But you’ve got two members of Congress doing your bidding for you, pretty much on command. With one you’ve got a textbook corrupt arrangement. He does your bidding. You give him cash. With the other guy, it’s just for good government? He just temporarily lost faith in the F-22?<\/p>\n

Look back through the record: you see Jerry Lewis doing a lot of bidding for Brent Wilkes and Bill Lowery. See example after example and at a certain point you just add two and two and it occurs to you that it might equal four.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It would have been difficult to imagine earlier this year, but the Cunningham\/Wilkes scandal may rival the Abramoff scandal in terms of seriousness, illegalities, and lawmakers brought down in disgrace. It’s quite a GOP caucus we have here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The list of Republicans lawmakers facing criminal investigations was already pretty long (DeLay, [tag]Cunningham[\/tag], Ney, Frist), but we can now add another. Federal prosecutors have begun an investigation into Rep. [tag]Jerry Lewis[\/tag], the Californian who chairs the powerful House Appropriations Committee, government officials and others said, signaling the spread of a San Diego corruption probe. […]<\/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-7384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7384","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=7384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}