Reps. Harris And Goode And The Wade Indictment
What Wade Did
The Plea Agreement
The defense contractor who bribed ex-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R) says he directed $80K in illegal campaign contributions to two members of Congress. A staffer for one of the members inserted a $9M provision that benefited MZM into an approps bill.
From the indictment: "His solution [to get around campaign finance laws] was to have his employees and their spouses make contributions to these two campaigns under their own names, then reimburse them -- a technique, known as "straw contributions" that is a felony under federal election law when the straw contributions amount to over ten thousand dollars. ... All in all, he made 39 different "straw" contributions, with 19 different employees or spouses. In order to maximize the impact of these contributions, Wade personally handed a number of the campaign contributions, in the form of personal checks from employees and their spouses, to one of the representatives."
Who might those members be?
Well, a San Diego Union-Tribune story from '05 suggests that Wade's employees were pressured to donate money to the campaigns of Cunningham, Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL) and Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA).
At FECINFO.com, we searched for all contributions given by MZM employees in '04.
We found several dozen --just like the indictment says -- totaling about $60K -- to Harris and Goode. This list does NOT include contributions that spouses of MZM employees made to the two. No other candidate -- not even Cunningham -- received nearly as much. The dates in the indictment concur with the dates of the illegal contributions.
The Wade plea agreement says that Wade did not inform the members that he was pressuring his employees to contribute to them and it's not at all clear whether the members are in any legal jeopardy.
BTW: here's who MZM's PAC contributed money to in recent cycles.
In '04
Cunningham, Randy "Duke" (R-CA) $6,000
Forbes, J Randy (R-VA) $5,000
Goode, Virgil H Jr (R-VA) $10,000
Harris, Katherine (R-FL) $10,000
Hunter, Duncan (R-CA) $1,000
Renzi, Rick (R-AZ) $2,000
In '06:
Goode, Virgil H Jr (R-VA) $5,000
Hunter, Duncan (R-CA) $2,500
Tiahrt, Todd (R-KS) $1,000
Wamp, Zach (R-TN) $2,000
Note: Goode was never a member of the defense approps subcommittee; an earlier version of this post said he was.[MARC AMBINDER]
It's what they do.
Duke's a GOoPer!
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Sorry, but what is kimerikas?
Jane.
Sorry, but what is kimerikas?
Jane.
Sorry, but what is kimerikas?
Jane.