BRENT WILKES IS GETTING VERY FAMOUS. HOW MANY REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEN WILL BE IN THE SAME PRISON THAT HE'S IN?

Brent Wilkes' name has become something of a household name, at least in political circles, and today's L.A. TIMES did a whole feature on him. I don't think his family is exactly beaming over the attention-- or all that happy about his future long-term prospects in a federal penitentiary. Wilkes, who is singing every tune he knows to federal investigators, was already key in putting corrupt San Diego right-wing Republican nutcase, Randy "Duke" Cunningham behind bars. It is estimated that Wilkes will also be key in the imprisonment of Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Virgil Goode, Jr. (R-VA), John Doolittle (R-CA), Bob Ney (R-OH), Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and as many as a dozen other bribe-taking Republican solons. He has already been a major factor in the firing of the head of the CIA and the Executive Director of the CIA, Goss and Foggo, both of whom participated in Wilkes' DC poker parties. (Wilkes "lost" hundreds of thousands of dollars at these parties to Republicans who could then help his businesses. He also provided them with prostitutes and other goodies.)

And, as the TIMES says, he was just "a small defense contractor who looked for powerful friends in high places." He found them, starting with California's money-whore governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (who appointed him to a racetrack board in return for $87,000 in bribes contributions) to the man who really made the millions really start flowing for him: then Republican majority Leader, now indicted, disgraced, soon-to-be-imprisoned scumbag, Tom Delay (R-TX).

"Most of Wilkes' government work came from 'earmarks,' a controversial step in which legislators attach extra funds to bills to cover pet projects, even if a federal agency didn't request them." Jerry Lewis, probably the #1 most crooked congressman in DC now that DeLay is (along) gone, threatened to bring down the whole GOP a couple weeks ago when David Dreier wanted to include tightening up on earmarks in his make-believe ethics reform package. Lewis got his way and Republicans can just keep on accepting bribes and sneaking costly, unwarranted earmarks into appropriations bills. Thanks to Lewis, Doolittle, Foggo, Cunningham, DeLay, and Hunter Wilkes has become very, very wealthy. Keith Ashdown, vice president of policy for government watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington says he "was brilliant. He knew how to work the system and he made the U.S. government his bottomless piggybank."

Presumably the Feds are investigating the members of Congress who benefited the most from their close ties to Wilkes and his crooked associates. It is unknown who got the most in undocumented money but just the on-the-record stuff shows that the largest federal campaign donations went to Doolittle, conveniently a member of Lewis' House Appropriations Committee ($82,000). Cunningham received $76,500, $60,000 went to Appropriations Committee Chairman Lewis (R-Redlands), Duncan Hunter sucked in $41,000 and DeLay got $57,000. This is just scratching the surface of what some people estimate to be millions of dollars, perhaps tens of millions, that was paid out to Republican legislators. Example: although above I mentioned that DeLay got a $57,000 contribution, he also picked up thousands of dollars in tabs for DeLay's lavish lifestyle and also paid $630,000 to Alexander Strategy Group, a DeLay front organization run by one of his top aides-- now cooperating with federal authorities in return for a lighter sentence. Wilkes has been subpoenaed by Texas prosecutors as part of their investigation into the DeLay's criminal activities.

Similarly, Lewis, who probably got the most out of Wilkes overall-- and did the most for him-- was only the recipient of $60,000-70,000 directly. As everyone on Capitol Hill has long known, if you want to bribe Jerry Lewis, you go through Congressman-turned-lobbyist/bagman Bill Lowery. It looks like Lewis raked in over $100,000 from Wilkes through Lowery, perhaps far more. Staunch and committed Republican Brent Wilkes has come a very long way with his GOP buddies in power in DC. If Bush doesn't pardon him, he could spend most of the rest of his life in prison-- where he'll have lots of old friends.


9AM UPDATE: SO WHO EXACTLY WERE ALL THESE LUCKY POKER PLAYIN' REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEN?

In Ken Silverstein's piece in Harper's, "The Loss of Goss," he mentioned that he double-checked with his sources "regarding who attended Wilkes's parties, and all of them repeated what they had said before: over the years, at least six former and current members of Congress were said to have been at events sponsored by Wilkes, and their names have apparently been provided to investigators in the Cunningham case. Also, it wasn't only congressmen who were at the parties; intelligence officials, businessmen, and assorted hangers-on also attended. (As we previously noted, some of the attendees may have simply dropped by for a drink.) "At least six former and current members of Congress... That means there could have been 6 or 16 or maybe there were 45 and that's why Ken Mehlman told congressional Repugs that they could look forward to losing 45 seats in the House come November. Well, we know for sure one of the 6 (or 45) was Cunningham. So who else was availing himself of the opportunity to win large poker bets from Brent Wilkes, always willing to walk away from the table several thousand dollars short, as long as the winners were earmarkers? Obviously his good buds from California: Lewis, Hunter, Doolittle, perhaps ex-congressman-turned-lobbyist-turned-candidate-to-replace-Cunningham, Brian Bilbray. But then there's Virgil Goode, Jr and one must never count out the likelihood that Tom DeLay and Bob Ney will turn up on these lists. Apparently some of the limo drivers and some of the gals have been talking to authorities too.