Yes, There's Other News-- Take Kyle Dusty Foggo and Alberto Gonzales, For Example

Gonzales and Foggo: two Republicrooks facing the bar of Justice

The Bush Regime appointed a corrupt political hack as Executive Director of the CIA-- then professed shock-- I mean shock-- when he behaved like... a corrupt political hack. We've been covering his case here at DWT since early March, 2006 when Newsweek first floated the facts about his sleazy relationship to corrupt members of Congress. The Bush Regime has skipped away from this disaster without so much as a "huh?" from the American people. The police swept into his home and office, indicted, and... well, today he pleaded guilty to extremely reduced charges. In fact, one charge "of defrauding the United States in a corruption case that stemmed from the bribery scandal that brought down former U.S. Congressman Randall 'Duke' Cunningham."

Bush appointed him to be the #3 ranking official at the CIA to make sure all the kickbacks and bribes went to the right (right-wing) people. He was in cahoots with GOP lobbyist and contractor Brent Wilkes who currently in prison after being convicted of bribing Cunningham. He was sentenced to 12 years but, like all the Republican crooks found guilty of corruption, is expected to be pardoned by Bush before he leaves the White House he has disgraced so badly.

And Foggo isn't the only Republicrook coming home to roost who Bush will be pardoning in January. Today Attorney General Mukasey appointed a federal prosecutor to look into whether or not his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, should spend the rest of his miserable life-- or some part of it-- behind bars for turning the Department of Justice into a politicized whore house-- and for the cover-up that followed. So far, "the investigation uncovered 'significant evidence' that partisan political factors played a role in some of the 2006 dismissals. Particularly 'troubling,' according to the report, was the sacking of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias after several Republican elected officials complained about voter fraud and public corruption cases he pursued. That episode raises the possibility that obstruction of justice and wire fraud laws were violated."

In the 390-page report, issued this morning, they said Gonzales "bears primary responsibility" for the debacle and asserted that he was "remarkably disengaged" from the process, which stretched on for months. Investigators said that after the mass firings came to light, Gonzales made "misleading" public statements about his involvement, failing to recall his attendance at a critical meeting and documents that landed on his desk.

...The internal watchdogs asked that the investigation continue under the authority of a prosecutor with the power to compel testimony and production of documents. They said their probe was thwarted in part because they could not interview key witnesses, including former White House officials Karl Rove, Harriet E. Miers and William Kelley. Investigators also pointed out that the White House refused to turn over internal documents related to the dismissal of the prosecutors by citing the "sensitivity" of the issues, saying the move had "hindered" their inquiry.

Mukasey selected Connecticut Acting U.S. Attorney Nora R. Dannehy, a federal prosecutor for 17 years, to answer the lingering questions. Dannehy will report to the department's second in command. Her investigation likely will extend for months, ensuring that the politically charged issue will extend into the next administration.

UPDATE: Poker, Hookers, and Black Contracts: Or How To Make a CIA Trial Go Away

The above is the title of Laura Rozen's Mother Jones piece on the latest Dusty Foggo developments. I recommend you click the link and read it in its entirety.

...it wasn't the hookers, the card games, the water contract, or even the staff mistress that concerned the Agency's executives when Foggo spared them by entering a guilty plea on a single count of wire fraud Monday. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors agreed to drop the 27 other charges and requested only three years prison time out of the 20 Foggo could have faced. ("Your lawyers did a good job for you," US District judge James C. Cacheris told Foggo after he accepted his guilty plea, with evident understatement.)

No, what truly worried Agency brass were the darker secrets their former top logistics officer was threatening to spill had his case gone to trial as scheduled on November 3. They included the massive contracts Foggo was discussing with Wilkes, estimated by one source at over $300 million dollars. "Wilkes was working on several other huge deals when the hammer fell," a source familiar with Foggo's discussions with Wilkes told me. What kinds of deals? According to the source, they included creating and running a secret plane network, for whatever needs the CIA has for secret planes now that the network it used for extraordinary rendition flights has been outed. "In or about December 2004," the Foggo indictment says, "Foggo discussed with Wilkes and J.C. the idea that Foggo might be able to get Wilkes a classified government contract to supply air support services to the CIA…. In or about January 2005, Wilkes directed various ADCS employees to begin developing an air support proposal that would be designed to answer the CIA's classified needs as outlined by Foggo."

REPUBLICAN CONTRACTOR BRENT WILKES CONVICTED ON ALL 13 COUNTS

The case was so solid and one of the GOP contractors who was bribing Randy "Duke" Cunningham and at least half a dozen other Republican members of Congress was convicted today on all 13 charges. He could wind up in prison for 2 decades but that seems unlikely since he has the goods on so many lawmakers. During the trial, for example, he testified that he got far more out of crooked GOP congressman Jerry Lewis than he ever did out of Cunningham. And he has another trial coming up for bribing CIA Executive Director (procurement maven) Dusty Foggo.

Following the verdict, jury forewoman Tyheshia Smith-Kruck, the only jury member to speak to reporters, said the jury had no doubts about Wilkes' guilt.

“The evidence was enough to convict him of all charges,” she said.

...Wilkes was tried on 13 charges of conspiracy, bribery, money laundering and honest services wire fraud.

Prosecutors contended that from 1997 to 2004 he showered Cunningham with gifts small and large. In all, they alleged, he leveraged $625,000 in cash bribes and tens of thousands more in gifts ranging from meals to computers in exchange for Cunningham's influence in appropriating money and pressuring bureaucrats to award contracts to ADCS Inc., Wilkes' company.

Wilkes forcefully denied bribing Cunningham. He testified that his interactions with the congressman were legitimate and legal, and his activity was simply “business as usual” in the lobbying and appropriations culture in Washington, D.C.

A central part of that culture is the process of earmarks-- where representatives insert money into budgets for programs with no oversight. That was a key component of the trial, with the government alleging Wilkes plied Cunningham to get earmarks into the Pentagon budget and then lean on bureaucrats to steer contracts to his company.

In addition to meals, there were flights in private jets, computers and software purchased for the congressman, and two small jet boats and a dock.

The big-ticket items in the case involved a $100,000 payment Wilkes made to Cunningham in 2000. Prosecutors said it was a bribe. Wilkes, however, maintained he was buying Cunningham's boat, the Kelly C. But the deal was never completed, according to Wilkes, because congressional staffers objected, saying that it was wrong for someone with business before Cunningham to pay him for the boat.

So when does the Jerry Lewis trial start? Denny Hastert? Virgil Goode? Katherine Harris?

WHICH GOP CONGRESSMEN WILL GO TO PRISON WITH DUSTY FOGGO AND BRENT WILKES? JOHN DOOLITTLE? JERRY LEWIS? DUNCAN HUNTER?

GOP ex-congressmen Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Bob Ney are rotting in prison. They're barely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the all-pervasive Republican Culture of Corruption that dominated Washington since the advent of criminal operators like Tom DeLay, Rick Santorum, John Boehner, Roy Blunt, Jerry Lewis, Dollar Bill Frist, Duncan Hunter inside the power structures of both the House and Senate. Some, like Dirty Dick Pombo, Katherine Harris and Conrad Burns, have been expunged. Many, from low-information and backward districts, are laying low and hoping to escape without indictments and criminal charges. At one time they hoped the politicization of the Justice Department by Regime stooges Albert Gonzales and Karl Rove would protect them.

Dual trials for criminal best buds, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo and Brent Wilkes will jeopardize at least a dozen congressional Republicans who were in "business" with these two shysters. Most likely to wind up behind bars in the wake of Wilkes and Foggo are Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Virgil Goode (R-VA), and John Doolittle (R-CA) but there are a dozen more Republican congressmembers and former congressmembers nearly as besotted as those four.

Friday, A.P.'s Charles Babington was wringing his hands in despair today because lobbying reform is losing steam in Congress. "House Democrats are suddenly balking at the tough lobbying reforms they touted to voters last fall as a reason for putting them in charge of Congress. Now that they are running things, many Democrats want to keep the big campaign donations and lavish parties that lobbyists put together for them. They're also having second thoughts about having to wait an extra year before they can become high-paid lobbyists themselves should they retire or be defeated at the polls."

Oh, I'm shocked! When the congressional Democrats chose hack K Street pol Steny Hoyer as their leader and elevated their own version of Tom DeLay to the ostensibly #4 spot (although he-- the Chicago Daley Machine's Rahm Emanuel-- certainly has far more control than #3 and probably as much as #2), meaningful reform-- if it ever had any real chance-- was D.O.A. While I have no doubt that Speaker Pelosi and a handful of veteran progressives and populists would love to see the overwhelming power and inevitable corrupting influence of cold hard cash removed from the political equation, I see no proof that there is any real will among many congressional Democrats to be significantly less sleazy than the Republicans.

"The longer we wait, the weaker the bill seems to get" said Craig Holman of Public Citizen, which has pushed for the changes. "The sense of urgency is fading," he said, in part because scandals such as those involving disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Rep. Duke Cunningham, R-Calif., have given way to other news." Well, that could work in favor of the bill too. If the Wilkes and Foggo prosecutions lead to indictments for a significant number of high profile congressmen-- and there is no reason to imagine that, at the very minimum, Doolittle, Lewis, Goode, Hunter, aren't going down-- that could provide the public rage and pressure to force even the most hard core corrupt Democrats, the Emanuels and Hoyers, to embrace real campaign finance reform if, for no other reason, self-preservation. It really has to come from the public. Congress is not likely to reform laws they have carefully crafted to benefit themselves-- unless the outpouring of public rage overwhelms them.

And Matt Stoller is over at Firedoglake today at 2pm PT (5 back East) leading the Book Salon and discussing the most corrupt of all Democrats, Rahm Emanuel, in terms of The Thumpin', the pathetic ass-kissing book he had one of his cronies write about him.


UPDATE: CHRIS VAN HOLLEN IS NO RAHM EMANUEL... THANK GOD!

We all knew a new day was dawning when Emanuel ceded his DCCC chair to progressive good-government colleague Chris Van Hollen. But nowhere is the contrast sharper than when it comes to corruption. CVH is against it. Emanuel is it. Reports today have Emanuel imitating Dick Cheney-- perfect role model-- telling a reporter asking about his stand on lobbying reform to "go fuck yourself." Meanwhile Van Hollen has been bucking Emanuel who, on this issue resembles Jerry Lewis (R-CA) more than anything anyone would recognize as a Democrat. The Hill: "Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has taken the lead trying to craft a workable solution to the bundling issue in the House. Earlier this year, he and Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) introduced the disclosure language from the Senate reform package as a stand-alone measure."

Good to know the good guys are in charge of something somewhere.