UNLESS BUSH PARDONS HIM, ANOTHER REPUBLICAN CROOK IS HEADED FOR A DOZEN YEARS IN PRISON-- REMEMBER BRENT WILKES?

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He had a sharp lawyer-- Mark Geragos-- but in the end, GOP crooked contractor, Brent Wilkes, will have to depend on Bush's pardon pen to keep him from spending the next 12 years in prison. He was painted by federal prosecutors as "the mastermind behind the largest congressional bribery scheme in history." No charges have been leveled in the case against most of the Republicans he bribed. I mean they have established he was bribing congressmen. Well... why haven't Jerry Lewis, Denny Hastert, Tom Feeney, Virgil Goode, Katherine Harris, Tom DeLay, Duncan Hunter, John Doolittle, etc, been taken into custody yet? Although both Lewis and Hastert were named as people who accepted bribes during testimony, the prosecution tried to keep this narrowly focused on Duke Cunningham-related crimes.

During Wilkes' trial, prosecutors presented evidence that he showered Cunningham, a Republican congressman from Rancho Santa Fe, with expensive meals, gifts, fancy trips, cash bribes and prostitutes.

In exchange for the gifts and bribes, Cunningham, who then held a seat on a powerful defense committee, used his influence to earmark money in budgets and steer projects that benefited ADCS, Inc., the Poway defense contracting firm that Wilkes owned.

An investigator said in court papers that the federal government lost at least $30 million and as much as $60 million on the contracts that ADCS was involved in.

Cunningham was a small-time hood compared to the real money guys on that committee, especially Lewis and Hunter, each of whom has used political connections to keep from being indicted. Lewis has spent well over a million dollars in legal fees, so far, to have U.S. Attorneys fired and transferred and to keep himself out of court.

Wilkes is 53 and if Bush forgets to pardon him he'll be 65 when he gets out of prison, still a young man compared to John McCain. The Feds had demanded 25 years for him, so he got off relatively lightly. And the probation officials who were called upon to make a sentencing recommendation based on all the facts in the case said he should get 60 years in prison, which would have meant, in effect, life. Judge Burns, indicating Wilkes was a possible flight risk, sent him directly to prison, writing that he's not trustworthy. Ya think?


UPDATE: MEDIA IGNORES THE MEAT OF THE MATTER

The mass media, like today's Washington Post, never really gets into the epidemic of bribery that has been at the heart of the Republican Culture of Corruption in DC for the past decade.

"There can be little doubt that Wilkes was the spider, and Cunningham the fly, in this web of corruption," prosecutors said.

Prosecutors also described Wilkes himself as "a frequent and enthusiastic patron of prostitutes" and said he kept a tape of himself having sex with two prostitutes in his office safe.

"Wilkes coldly and successfully exploited the simplemindedness of one of this country's war heroes, now a tortured shadow of his former self," prosecutors wrote. "Wilkes stands now revealed as a war profiteer, a thug, a bully, a lecherous old man who preyed on his young female staffers and hired prostitutes."

...Wilkes is a Republican Party "Pioneer" who raised more than $100,000 for President Bush's reelection in 2004 and donated-- in concert with his business colleagues -- $656,396 to 64 other Republican lawmakers and the national Republican Party committees in Washington from 1995 through the third quarter of 2005, according to campaign finance records.

Who the hell cares if Wilkes is a lecherous old man and a patron of prostitutes. The Post should be looking into which Republican legislators got their share of the million dollars of more Wilkes funneled into their campaigns-- and pocketbooks-- and what they did for him in return. Cunningham was hardly the only fly Wilkes had trapped. Don't we need to hear more about his relationship with recipients of his generosity like Pat Roberts (R-KS), Jerry Lewis (R-CA, who he testified gave him far more than Cunningham ever did), Joe Knollenberg (R-MI), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Ken Calvert (R-CA), Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), Darrell Issa (R- CA), Larry Craig (R-ID), Heather Wilson (R-NM), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Joe Baca (D-CA), Brian Bilbray (R-CA), Bill Young (R-FL), and Robin Hayes (R-NC)?