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USANews版 - udicial Watch列出2011年华盛顿10大腐败政客
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https://www.judicialwatch.org/corrupt-politicians-lists/washingtons-ten-most
-wanted-corrupt-politicians-for-2011/
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes
government corruption, today released its 2011 list of Washington’s “Ten
Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” The list, in alphabetical order, includes:
Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL)
Former Senator John Ensign (R-NV)
Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
Attorney General Eric Holder
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)
President Barack Obama
Rep. Laura Richardson (D-CA)
Rep. David Rivera (R-FL)
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)
Rep. Don Young (R-AK)
Dishonorable Mentions for 2011 include:
Former Senator John Edwards (D-NC)
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA)
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY)
Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY)
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius
Spencer Bachus (R-AL): He has become the face of a congressional “insider
trading” scandal that has rocked the Washington establishment as 2011 draws
to a close. Rep. Spencer Bachus, Chairman of the House Financial Services
Committee, was one of the principal targets of a 60 Minutes investigative
report on the scandal, which aired on CBS in September 2011.
The report was based, at least in part, on the book Throw Them All Out by
author Peter Schweizer, which outed a slew of members of Congress who
allegedly profited in the financial markets by trading on insider
information. Bachus was not the only congressman cited by 60 Minutes –
others included Speaker of the House John Boehner and House Minority Leader
Nancy Pelosi – but the Alabama Republican stood out for his remarkable “
good fortune” in shorting the stock market.
According to the allegations made by Schweizer and 60 Minutes, Congressman
Bachus, at the time the ranking Republican on the Financial Services
Committee, traded short-term stock options in 2008 after receiving a private
briefing for congressional leaders by Secretary of the Treasury Hank
Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The subject of the
briefing: the pending meltdown in the global economy. Those privileged to
attend the meeting reportedly sat around a table in Pelosi’s office, having
left their cell phones outside the room to avoid leaks.
Congressman Bachus’s aggressive trading practices, in which he was able to
benefit by betting on falling stock prices, reportedly earned him
substantial profits from some of the 40 trades placed during the months of
July through November 2008, many of the trades occurring after the September
meeting.
In the wake of the congressional insider trading scandal, legislation
banning insider trading is under consideration in Congress. The Senate
Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee advanced a bill banning
insider trading on December 14, 2011. Similar legislation (pushed by Rep.
Bachus himself, obviously to deflect criticism) has stalled in the House.
Critics have suggested, and so has the House Ethics Committee, that the law
already prohibits insider trading by members of Congress.
Back to Top
Former Senator John Ensign (R-NV): John Ensign, former U.S. Senator from
Nevada and former Chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, was
forced to resign from office in May 2011 as the result of an investigation
by the Senate Ethics Committee. In a scandal that first broke in 2009,
Senator Ensign publicly admitted to an affair with the wife of long-time
staffer Douglas Hampton. Ensign then allegedly tried to cover up the affair
by bribing the couple with lucrative gifts and political favors.
According to The New York Times, after Hampton discovered the affair
involving his wife Cynthia, the senator bought his silence by giving him “a
strong boost into a lobbying career.” Ensign asked political backers to
find Hampton a job. “Payments of $96,000 to the Hamptons also were made by
Senator Ensign’s parents, who insist this was a gift, not hush money. Once
a lobbying job was secured, Senator Ensign and his chief of staff continued
to help Mr. Hampton, advocating his clients’ cases directly with federal
agencies.”
These lobbying activities seemingly violated the law related to the Senate’
s “cooling off” period for lobbyists. According to Senate rules, former
Senate aides “may not lobby the Member for whom he worked or that Member’s
staff for a period of one year after leaving [their] position.” Hampton
began to lobby Ensign’s office immediately upon leaving his job on Capitol
Hill.
In November 2010, the Federal Election Commission dismissed a complaint that
Ensign had violated campaign-finance laws, and in December, the Obama
Department of Justice announced that it would file no criminal charges
against the senator. Ensign, however, was unable to avoid the ongoing
investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee. In May 2011, the Senate Ethics
Committee issued a devastating report that summarized the evidence against
Ensign and made the extraordinary recommendation that the Justice Department
reopen a criminal investigation.
Back to Top
Attorney General Eric Holder: Attorney General Eric Holder now operates the
most politicized and ideological Department of Justice (DOJ) in recent
history. And revelations from the Operation Fast and Furious scandal suggest
that programs approved by the Holder DOJ may have resulted in the needless
deaths of many, including a federal law enforcement officer.
Fast and Furious was a DOJ/Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives (ATF) “gun-running” operation in which guns were sold to
Mexican drug cartels and others, apparently in hopes that the guns would end
up at crime scenes. This reckless insanity seems to have resulted in, among
other crimes, the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed
in a shootout with Mexican criminals in December 2010. Fast and Furious
guns were found at the scene of his death.
The Fast and Furious operation by itself should have resulted in Holder’s
resignation, but it is the cover-up that has prompted serious calls for
Holder’s ouster.
On May 3, 2011, in a House Judiciary Committee hearing chaired by Rep. Lamar
Smith (R-TX), Holder testified: “I’m not sure of the exact date, but I
probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few
weeks.” Newly released documents show he was receiving weekly briefings on
Fast and Furious as far back as July 5, 2010. It appears Holder lied to
Congress. (Judicial Watch sued the DOJ and the ATF to obtain Fast and
Furious records. The Judicial Watch investigation continues.)
Unfortunately, when it comes to Holder corruption and abuse of office, Fast
and Furious is just the tip of the iceberg.
On February 23, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that DOJ
lawyers would no longer defend the constitutionality of Section 3 of the
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), as applied to homosexual couples. DOMA had
passed Congress by a vote of 85–14 in the Senate and a vote of 342–67 in
the House. President Clinton signed the act into law on September 21, 1996.
Judicial Watch filed two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against
the DOJ (including one on behalf of the Family Research Council) for records
related to this pro-homosexual marriage decision. This failure to defend
this federal law is unprecedented and raises serious questions as to whether
President Obama and Eric Holder are upholding their oaths of office and
following the Constitution’s command to “take care that the laws be
faithfully executed.”
The DOJ continues to stonewall the release of information regarding Supreme
Court Justice Elena Kagan’s participation in Obamacare discussions when she
served as Solicitor General. In addition to forcing Judicial Watch to file
a lawsuit to obtain this information, Holder’s DOJ thumbed its nose at
Congress by failing to release this material to the Senate Judiciary
Committee during Kagan’s judicial confirmation hearing. Holder continues to
personally resist requests from Judicial Watch and Congress for additional
information on this controversy. Kagan’s role in these discussions is
especially significant now that the U.S. Supreme Court has announced it will
consider challenges to the constitutionality of Obamacare in Spring 2012.
New revelations emerged in 2011 about the DOJ’s Black Panther scandal.
Judicial Watch uncovered evidence that the liberal special interest group
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) may have
had an inappropriate amount of influence on the DOJ’s decision to drop its
voter intimidation lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party for Self
Defense. This comes on the heels of sworn testimony that the Civil Rights
Division of the Holder DOJ makes enforcement decisions based upon race.
Most recently, Judicial Watch obtained shocking documents suggesting the
Holder DOJ is conspiring with scandal-ridden Project Vote (President Obama’
s former employer and ACORN front) to use the National Voter Registration
Act to increase welfare voter registrations. One former ACORN employee (and
current Project Vote Director of Advocacy), Estelle Rogers, is even helping
to vet job candidates for the Justice Department’s Voting Rights Division!
(ACORN and Project Vote have a long record of voter registration fraud.)
Seeming to affirm ACORN’s hijacking of the DOJ, Holder recently said in a
speech that he plans to use “the full weight” of the agency in 2012 to
attack states that are enforcing laws that protect against fraud in the
voting booths. This speech ended the pretense that the DOJ is independent
from the Democratic National Committee and the Obama campaign – as it
repeated almost verbatim the partisan arguments made by the Democratic Party
against voter ID laws.
Holder must go. Pick your reason – Black Panthers, race-based decision
making, abandoning the Defense of Marriage Act, Fast and Furious killings
and lies, or turning the DOJ into an arm of the radicalized left – but
Holder must go.
Back to Top
Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL): In a year full of shocking congressional sex
scandals, perhaps none is more serious than that involving Florida Rep.
Alcee Hastings, who allegedly sexually harassed a female government employee
and then engaged in a cruel campaign of retaliation when she rebuffed his
advances. (On March 7, 2011, Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against Hastings
on behalf of the victim, Ms. Winsome Packer.)
The alleged harassment and retaliation began in 2008 when Hastings (formerly
an impeached federal judge) served as Chairman of the United States
Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Ms. Packer served as his
employee. According to Judicial Watch’s complaint, “Mr. Hastings’
intention was crystal clear: he was sexually attracted to Ms. Packer, wanted
a sexual relationship with her, and would help progress her career if she
acquiesced to his sexual advances.”
These advances included: Making multiple demands that Ms. Packer allow Rep.
Hastings to stay in her apartment while she served as the Commission’s lead
staff representative overseas; subjecting Ms. Packer to unwanted physical
contact, including hugging her with both arms while pressing his body
against her body and his face against her face; inviting her on multiple
occasions to accompany him alone to his hotel room; making sexual comments
and references to Ms. Packer; and asking Ms. Packer humiliating and
inappropriate questions in public, such as “What kind of underwear are you
wearing?”
In addition, Hastings seems to have abused his office by using government
travel as a cover for sightseeing and by soliciting gifts and campaign
contributions from congressional staff.
On November 28, 2011, The House Ethics Committee announced that it will take
an additional 45 days to determine whether to launch a full investigation
into the allegations against Hastings.
Back to Top
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) and the Blagojevich Co-Conspirators: It took
more than two years and two trials, but disgraced former Illinois Governor
Rod “Blago” Blagojevich was finally brought to justice on June 27, 2011,
for a number of crimes, including his efforts to “sell” President Obama’s
vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. He became the state’s fourth
governor, and one of at least 79 Illinois public officials, to be found
guilty of a crime since 1972, proving that Illinois has certainly lived up
to its reputation as a cesspool of corruption.
As the trial unfolded, it became clear that many hands were dirty in the
Blago scandal. (See Chicago Mayor and former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm “
Rahmbo” Emanuel, who was finally forced to testify during this second Blago
trial – for a whopping five minutes – and President Obama himself, who
was interviewed by the FBI in the scandal even before he took office.)
But all of the focus now seems to center on Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.
The House Ethics Committee announced on December 2, 2011, that it will
continue its investigation into allegations that “Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. or
someone acting on his behalf offered to raise campaign cash for then-Gov.
Rod Blagojevich in exchange for a Senate appointment in 2008….The committee
also released an initial report from the Office of Congressional Ethics
that said there was “probable cause” to believe that Jackson either
directed a third party or had knowledge of a third party’s effort to
convince the since-convicted Blagojevich to appoint Jackson Jr. in exchange
for campaign cash.
The evidence suggests Jackson, Jr. attempted to bribe his way into the U.S.
Senate. And it will take a monumental lack of attention on the part of the
House Ethics Committee to overlook the Illinois Congressman’s role in this
serious scandal.
Back to Top
President Barack Obama: President Obama makes Judicial Watch’s “Ten Most
Wanted” list for a fifth consecutive year. (The former Illinois Senator was
also a “Dishonorable Mention” in 2006.) And when it comes to Obama
corruption, it may not get any bigger than Solyndra. Solyndra was once known
as the poster child for the Obama administration’s massive “green energy
” initiative, but it has become the poster child for the corruption that
ensues when the government meddles in the private sector. Solyndra filed for
bankruptcy in September 2011, leaving 1,100 workers without jobs and the
American taxpayers on the hook for $535 million thanks to an Obama
administration stimulus loan guarantee.
Despite the Obama administration’s reticence to release details regarding
this scandal, much is known about this shady deal. White House officials
warned the president that the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program
was “dangerously short on due diligence,” nonetheless the Obama
administration rushed the Solyndra loan through the approval process so it
could make a splash at a press event. The company’s main financial backer
was a major Obama campaign donor named George Kaiser. While the White House
said Kaiser never discussed the loan with White House officials, the
evidence suggests this is a lie. And, further demonstrating the political
nature of the Obama administration’s activities, the Energy Department
pressured Solyndra to delay an announcement on layoffs until after the 2010
elections. Despite the public outrage at this scandalous waste of precious
tax dollars, President Obama continues to defend the indefensible and has
refused to sack anyone over the Solyndra mess.
President Obama continues to countenance actions by his appointees that
undermine the rule of law and constitutional government:
Despite a ban on funding that Obama signed into law, his administration
continues to fund the corrupt and allegedly defunct “community”
organization ACORN. In July 2011 Judicial Watch uncovered a $79,819 grant to
AHCOA (Affordable Housing Centers of America), the renamed ACORN Housing
which has a long history of corrupt activity. In absolute violation of the
funding ban, Judicial Watch has since confirmed that the Obama
administration has funneled $730,000 to the ACORN network, a group that has
a long personal history with President Obama.In 2011, JW released a special
report entitled “The Rebranding of ACORN,” which details how the ACORN
network is alive and well and well-placed to undermine the integrity of the
2012 elections – evidently with the assistance of the Obama administration.
Barack Obama apparently believes it is his “prerogative” to ignore the
U.S. Constitution and the rule of law when it comes to appointing czars.
According to Politico: “President Barack Obama is planning to ignore
language in the 2011 spending package that would ban several top White House
advisory posts. Obama said this ban on “czars” would undermine “the
President’s ability to exercise his constitutional responsibilities and
take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” In other words, Barack
Obama believes he must ignore the U.S. Constitution to protect the U.S.
Constitution. Many Obama administration czars have not been subject to
confirmation by the U.S. Senate as required by the U.S. Constitution. In
2011, JW released a first-of-its-kind comprehensive report on the Obama czar
scandal, entitled “President Obama’s Czars.”
In an historic victory for Judicial Watch and an embarrassing defeat for
the Obama White House, a federal court ruled on August 17, 2011 that Secret
Service White House visitor logs are agency records that are subject to
disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. U.S. District Judge Beryl
Howell issued the decision in Judicial Watch v. Secret Service. The Obama
administration now will have to release all records of all visitors to the
White House – or explain why White House visits should be kept secret under
the law. The Obama White House continues to fight full disclosure and has
stalled the release of records by appealing the lower court decision.(
Judicial Watch gave Obama a “failing grade” on transparency in testimony
before Congress in 2011. (Read the testimony in full as well as additional
congressional testimony during a hearing entitled “White House Transparency
, Visitor Logs and Lobbyists.”))
In 2011, the Obama National Labor Relations Board sought to prevent the
Seattle-based Boeing Company from opening a $750 million non-union assembly
line in North Charleston, South Carolina, to manufacture its Dreamliner
plane. Judicial Watch obtained documents from the National Labor Relations
Board (NLRB) showing this lawsuit was politically motivated. Judicial Watch
uncovered documents showing NLRB staff cheerleading for Big Labor, mouthing
Marxist, anti-American slurs and showing contempt for Congress related to
the agency’s lawsuit against Boeing, including email correspondence
attacking members of Congress. And it starts at the top. Obama bypassed
Congress and recess-appointed Craig Becker, who is connected to the AFL-CIO,
the SEIU and ACORN, to the NRLB.
Obama’s corrupt Chicago dealings continued to haunt him in 2011.Obama’
s real estate partner, campaign fundraiser and Obama pork recipient Antoin
“Tony” Rezko was finally sentenced to jail this year as was former
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who is now set to serve 14 years for
attempting to sell Obama’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder. The
FBI continues to withhold from Judicial Watch documents of its historic
interview of then-Senator Obama about the Illinois corruption scandal. The
FBI interview was conducted in December, 2008, about one month before Obama
was sworn into the presidency.
Back to Top
Rep. Laura Richardson (D-CA): A first-timer on Judicial Watch’s “Ten Most
Wanted” list, Rep. Laura Richardson is in hot water for reportedly misusing
her congressional staff for personal and political gain. Rep. Richardson is
now under investigation by the House Ethics Committee regarding allegations
by former staff member Maria Angel Macias. Macias alleges that she was
required by Richardson to order other staffers to run personal errands for
the Democrat congresswoman – such as picking up her dry cleaning – and to
work on her re-election campaign at taxpayer expense.
Richardson’s alleged behavior would violate federal law, which protects
federal employees from “being forced by job-related threats or reprisals to
donate to political candidates or causes.” House ethics rules also specify
that “in no event may a member or office compel a House employee to do
campaign work.”
Macias indicated to the Committee that Richardson regularly directed her to
call staff members outside of office hours to “make them work at campaign
events.” According to former employees, they were required to work the
extended hours “under threat of dismissal,” and reportedly, were even
required to act as servers at such events. Shirley Cooks, chief of staff for
Representative Richardson, was also directed to ensure that staff members
“volunteered” for off-hour campaign projects.
Rep. Richardson has responded by denying that she has ever forced employees
to volunteer on campaigns, and then played the “race card,” claiming she
is being targeted because she is black and because she is a woman.
Richardson has further indicated that she would explore whether the Ethics
Committee “has engaged in discriminatory conduct”… which is a blatant
attempt to intimidate committee members and undermine the investigation.
Richardson is not new to controversy and investigations of ethics violations
. Complaints against her include commandeering emergency helicopters in her
California district for use as sightseeing vehicles for her staff and of her
receiving special treatment when a bank rescinded the sale of a foreclosed
home Rep. Richardson owned in Sacramento and then restructured her mortgage.
(This was the third home on which Rep. Richardson had missed payments.)
The House Ethics Committee failed to punish her over the foreclosure deal (
no surprises there) and approximately one year later Richardson again
defaulted on her payments. True to form, however, Richardson failed to take
responsibility for her actions, claiming the default was due to a “clerical
error.”
Back to Top
Rep. David Rivera (R-FL): Rep. David Rivera, U.S. Representative for Florida
’s 25th congressional district, is mired in numerous ethics controversies
stemming from charges of money laundering and tax evasion schemes initiated
when Rivera served in the Florida House of Representatives. The Republican
congressman, serving his first term, is currently under investigation by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS),
the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Miami-Dade Police public
corruption unit, and the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office.
Of particular interest is the investigation by the FBI and the IRS regarding
Rep. Rivera’s dealings with the Flagler Dog Track, now known as the Magic
City Casino. The basis for the investigation relates to payments reportedly
totaling as much as $1 million made by the casino to Millennium Marketing in
the guise of a consulting contract. Most of the money is said to have been
paid in 2008.
Millennium Marketing is owned by Rivera’s mother and godmother, and Rivera
supposedly benefited from the arrangement, and is thus the subject of a tax
evasion inquiry. Income from the consulting contract was never reported by
Rivera on his tax forms, nor did he mention the Millennium deal in financial
disclosure forms filed with the Florida Ethics Commission. Instead, Rivera
indicated that he had worked as a consultant for the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID), in addition to being a member of the
Florida House of Representatives. He reported no income for USAID, however,
and the agency had no record of his having ever worked there.
For a long time, Rep. Rivera denied ever receiving any income from the dog
track, but just before heading to Congress, Rivera admitted receiving $132,
000 in “undisclosed loans” from Millennium. He claims he paid the money
back.
Participating in the dog track inquiry – and at one time having had the
lead on the case – is the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, assisted
by the Miami-Dade Police. Investigators are also taking a close look at
Rivera’s campaign spending, including $75,000 he paid in 2010 “to a now-
defunct consulting company owned by the daughter of a top aide.”
Back to Top
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA): Rep. Maxine Waters is one of the most senior and
one of the most outspoken members of Congress. She is also one of the most
corrupt.
In August 2010, an investigative subcommittee of the House Ethics Committee
charged Rep. Waters with three counts of violating House rules and ethics
regulations in connection with her use of power and influence on behalf of
OneUnited Bank. She was expected to face an ethics trial in late 2010, but
the committee delayed the trial indefinitely on November 29, 2010, citing
newly discovered documentary evidence that may impact proceedings.
The delay apparently has less to do with evidence and more to do with
infighting on the panel. Ultimately, an outside counsel was retained and a
recommendation was expected by January 2, 2012. However, the Committee
announced that the Waters probe will be extended until July 31, 2012.
According to The Associated Press, the charges currently under the House
Ethics Committee microscope “focus on whether Waters broke the rules in
requesting federal help [bailout money] for a bank where her husband owned
stock and had served on the board of directors.” At the time she requested
the help, Waters neglected to tell Treasury officials about her financial
ties to OneUnited Bank.
Without intervention by Waters (and a big assist from her co-conspirator Rep
. Barney Frank), OneUnited was an extremely unlikely candidate for Troubled
Asset Relief Program (TARP) funding. The Treasury Department indicated that
it would only provide bailout funds to healthy banks to jump-start lending.
However, Judicial Watch uncovered documents detailing the deplorable
financial condition of OneUnited at the time of the cash infusion. In fact,
just prior to the bailout, OneUnited received a “less than satisfactory
rating.”
Aside from OneUnited, there was yet another scandal with Waters’
fingerprints all over it.
According to The Washington Times: “A lobbyist known as one of California’
s most successful power brokers while serving as a legislative leader in
that state paid Rep. Maxine Waters’ husband $15,000 in consulting fees at a
time she was co-sponsoring legislation that would help save the real-estate
finance business of one of the lobbyist’s best-paying clients…”
“Real-estate finance businesses,” such as the one helped by Waters’
influence, were labeled a “scam” by the IRS in a 2006 report.
Despite all of her ethical woes, Maxine Waters seeks to take over the
retiring Barney Frank’s position as the ranking Democrat on the House
Financial Services Committee. It is quite obvious that Rep. Waters has
neither the integrity nor the ethics necessary to hold such a position of
public trust.
Back to Top
Rep. Don Young (R-AK): Rep. Don Young may have achieved a new level of
corruption in 2011. The House Ethics Committee announced just before
Christmas that the Alaska Republican Congressman was cleared of allegations
by the House Ethics Committee that he exceeded the limit on campaign
donations to his legal defense fund – which was set up to defend Young
against an entirely different set of corruption charges! There was good
reason the House Ethics Committee released this decision after most of
official Washington left for the Christmas holiday: because the Committee’s
“exoneration” is a joke.
House ethics rules prohibit contributions from any single source that exceed
$5,000. Young received $63,000 from “twelve companies that…were in fact
owned by Gary Chouest, his wife, and his five children, or some combination
of those seven individuals.” Despite an independent analysis by the Office
of Congressional Ethics (OCE) that the shell-game was a rather transparent
violation of the contribution limit, the House Ethics Committee gave Young a
free pass because the 12 companies controlled by essentially one individual
were “separate legal entities”!
On July 24, 2007, the Wall Street Journal reported that Young was under
federal investigation for taking bribes, illegal gratuities, and unreported
gifts from VECO Corporation, an Anchorage, Alaska- based company. Two
executives in the company, including former company CEO Bill Allen, had
already pled guilty to bribing members of the Alaska legislature. Reportedly
, Young received $157,000 from VECO.
Rep. Young has developed a legendary reputation for steering federal dollars
to Alaska. As The New Republic put it, Rep. Young is “well known for his
sharp elbows and generous appetite for legislative pork,” including the $
223 million he secured to build the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere.”
Eventually, lawmakers responded to the mounting criticism and the bridge was
defunded.
Over the years, Rep. Young has been linked to lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s
illegal efforts to lease government property, and he has been criticized for
adding a $10 million earmark to a transportation bill for a short piece of
road in Florida near Fort Myers, called Coconut Road. The local real estate
developer who owned 4,000 acres along the road helped raise $40,000 for
Young’s campaign, which might go a long way toward explaining why the
Alaska congressman aggressively pushed to build a road in Florida.
Back to Top
DISHONORABLE MENTIONS:
Former Senator John Edwards (D-NC): Former Senator John Edwards, who was the
Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2004 and candidate for the
Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, was indicted on June 3, 2011 by
a grand jury in North Carolina on six felony charges, attributable – at
least initially – to the cover-up of an extramarital affair with Rielle
Hunter, who had been hired as a filmmaker for his campaign. After years of
lies denying the relationship, Edwards finally admitted to the affair in the
summer of 2008, but continued to claim until January 2010 that a child
conceived out of wedlock, Frances Quinn Hunter, was not his child.
According to campaign aide Andrew Young, Edwards had pleaded with him to
claim that he, Young, was the father and not Edwards. ABC news reported that
Young stated in an interview that Edwards asked him to: “Get a doctor to
fake the DNA results… and to steal a diaper from the baby so he could
secretly do a DNA test to find out if this [was] indeed his child.”
As is so often the case when politicians get involved with sexual
shenanigans, it is the cover-up, not necessarily the transgression, which
now has Edwards in legal hot water. John Edwards is alleged to have diverted
campaign funds for his personal use to hide the affair.
On May 25, The New York Times reported that the DOJ had conducted a two-year
investigation into the use of more than $925,000 in political donations to
hide the affair. Edwards was indicted on June 3, 2011. Should Edwards be
convicted, he could be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison and fined as
much as $1.5 million. The trial date has been set for January 30, 2012.
Back to Top
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): Another perennial member of JW’s list of
Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” will soon be saying
goodbye to Congress.
Rep. Barney Frank blamed redistricting for his decision to leave office, but
the congressional ethics investigation of the OneUnited Bank scandal also
implicating California Rep. Maxine Waters must have helped make it easier
for him to flee the capital. Both Frank and Waters improperly intervened to
secure taxpayer TARP bailout money for the corruptly-run Massachusetts bank,
earning them placements on the 2010 “Most Wanted” list.
When asked about the scandal, Frank admitted that he spoke to a “federal
regulator” but, according to The Wall Street Journal, “he didn’t remember
which federal regulator he spoke with.” That seemed a lie at the time, so
Judicial Watch investigated. Sure enough, according to explosive Treasury
Department emails uncovered by Judicial Watch in 2010, it appears this
nameless bureaucrat was none other than then-Treasury Secretary Henry “Hank
” Paulson!
Frank will forever be tied to the implosion at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac –
and the resulting collapse of the housing market. Frank, a key member of
Congress on the “take” from Fannie and Freddie, resisted any effort to
subject the two Government Sponsored Enterprises to any effective oversight.
For example, during a hearing on September 10, 2003, before the House
Committee on Financial Services considering a Bush administration proposal
to further regulate Fannie and Freddie, Rep. Frank stated: “I want to begin
by saying that I am glad to consider the legislation, but I do not think we
are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two Government
Sponsored Enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
are not in a crisis…I do not think at this point there is a problem with a
threat to the Treasury.” Frank received $42,350 in campaign contributions
from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between 1989 and 2008.
Frank’s corrupt behavior earned the attention of his congressional
colleagues in 1990, when the House voted 408-18 to reprimand him for abusing
his office to “fix” 33 parking tickets for Stephen Gobie, an acknowledged
prostitute and former boyfriend of Barney Frank who had accumulated the
tickets while driving Frank’s car. Frank wrote a memo intended to shorten
probation for Gobie, who had been convicted of the sex and drug crimes of
operating a gay prostitution ring out of the apartment he shared with Frank.
Frank also admitted in the book Reckless Endangerment that he helped yet
another boyfriend gain a lucrative position with Fannie and Freddie, which
is yet another abuse of office. When confronted on the controversy, Frank
said, “If it is a [conflict of interest] then much of Washington is
involved in [conflicts].”
That might be the most factual statement Barney Frank has ever made.
Back to Top
Former House Speaker and Current Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich:
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has a career plagued by scandal and
corruption.
Perhaps most notably, on January 22, 1997, by a vote of 395 to 28, the House
of Representatives voted to reprimand Speaker Gingrich for “intentional…
or reckless” disregard for House rules and ordered him to pay an
unprecedented penalty of $300,000 for ethical wrongdoing. It was the first
time in the 208-year history of the House that such a step against a Speaker
had been taken. (Gingrich had faced a raft of charges for alleged ethics
violations during his tenure in the House.)
Following a scathing special counsel report to the House Ethics Committee
detailing the charges against Gingrich, the former Speaker admitted to
providing “inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable” statements to
congressional investigators. In a written statement, Gingrich stated that
his actions ”brought down on the people’s house a controversy which could
weaken the faith people have in their government.”
During the current presidential campaign, Gingrich has continuously misled
the American people about how he, like many retired politicians,
participated in DC’s lucrative influence-peddling industry.
Gingrich insinuated during one presidential debate that some members of
Congress who took money from Fannie and Freddie should go to jail. And yet,
over a span of eight years, according to Bloomberg News, The Gingrich Group
was paid between $1.6 and $1.8 million by the home mortgage company. At the
same time, Freddie Mac was engaged in massive fraud. Gingrich suggested he
was a “historian” for Freddie Mac. But the evidence clearly shows he was
“throwing his weight” behind the two Government Sponsored Enterprises to
prop them up, saying in one interview that Fannie and Freddie provided a
more “liquid and stable housing finance system than we would have” without
them. Ironically, President Obama, the man who Gingrich is seeking to oust
from office, is keeping secret each and every Freddie Mac (and Fannie Mae)
document, including those that could shed light on Gingrich’s relationship
with Freddie.
Gingrich also has claimed, “I have never done lobbying of any kind.”
However, as documented by the Washington Examiner’s Timothy Carney,
Gingrich was a hired gun for the drug lobby who “worked hard to persuade
Republican congressmen to vote for the Medicare drug subsidy that the
industry favored.” Carney reports that the Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers of America confirmed that they paid Gingrich. Bloomberg News
“cited sources from leading drug companies AstraZeneca and Pfizer saying
that those companies had also hired Gingrich.”
Gingrich has also sustained heavy criticism for his troubled personal life,
including the admission by Gingrich that he cheated on his second wife while
serving as Speaker of the House with then-House employee and current wife,
Callista Bisek.
Back to Top
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano: While Attorney
General Eric Holder was busy attacking states seeking to protect themselves
from uncontrolled illegal immigration in 2011, Homeland Security Secretary
Janet Napolitano presided over a campaign to bypass Congress and provide
amnesty to millions of illegal alien lawbreakers all in an obvious attempt
to garner more Hispanic votes for Obama’s re-election.
At first, Napolitano’s campaign was begun in stealth. But in 2011 the Obama
administration finally admitted that illegal alien amnesty is now the
official policy of the United States of America, courtesy of Janet
Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS). According to The New
York Times:
The Department of Homeland Security will begin a review on Thursday (
November 17, 2011) of all deportation cases before the immigration courts
and start a nationwide training program for enforcement agents and
prosecuting lawyers, with the goal of speeding deportations of convicted
criminals and halting those of many illegal immigrants with no criminal
record.
Don’t believe for a second DHS’s line that criminal illegal aliens won’t
find themselves “outside the department’s priorities.” This is an
outright lie.
In 2011, Judicial Watch uncovered documents from Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) proving that immigration officials were urged to use “
prosecutorial discretion” to dismiss deportation proceedings against a wide
variety of illegal alien criminals — including those convicted of serious
crimes such as sexual assault, solicitation of murder, aggravated assault,
assaulting a police officer, and kidnapping, as well as numerous drug
charges.
And to highlight the depth of this amnesty scheme, consider the case of
Carlos Martinelly-Montano, the drunk-driving illegal immigrant from Bolivia
who killed a Catholic nun and severely injured two others in Prince William
County, Virginia, on August 1, 2010. Napolitano ordered an investigation
into Montano’s background but initially refused to release the agency’s
findings — until Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit. On March 3, 2011, Judicial
Watch finally got hold of the “cleaned up” version of the Homeland
Security report (after a lengthy back-and-forth with DHS.)
And what did Judicial Watch uncover? Montano should have been deported, but
thanks to the illegal alien sanctuary policies of the federal government,
local authorities and the courts, he was allowed back onto the streets.
Evidently, Janet Napolitano believes her agency may simply choose to ignore
illegal immigration laws to help Obama get reelected. Moreover, the DHS
seems more than willing to stonewall and obfuscate in order to conceal its
questionable activities. As some key of members of Congress wrote Napolitano:
This new [backdoor amnesty] policy undermines the rule of law and intrudes
on the role of Congress to make the law, while denigrating the role of the
executive to carry out the laws enacted by Congress.
Napolitano’s attempt to rewrite immigration law on her own is an affront to
constitutional government.
Back to Top
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): Despite the media firestorm over her military
travel abuses ignited by a Judicial Watch investigation, Nancy Pelosi
continued to use the United States Air Force as her own personal travel
agency right up until her final days as House Speaker according to documents
Judicial Watch uncovered from the Air Force in 2011.
Pelosi used Air Force aircraft for 43 flights from January 1 to October 1,
2010. By comparison, Nancy Pelosi logged 47 flights in the previous nine-
month period, April 1, 2009, to January 1, 2010, according to previous
documents uncovered by Judicial Watch. In other words, she did not back off
at all from her pattern of abuse.
In fact, these documents show Pelosi not only receiving special treatment on
military flights (chocolate covered strawberries for her birthday, for
example), but also ferrying her family back and forth on military aircraft,
including her husband, daughter, granddaughters and son-in-law. (The
following is a link to records detailing one such flight with her daughter
Christina.)
Pelosi was also caught up in the insider trading scandal that exploded into
the news in November 2011 courtesy of author Peter Schweizer and his book,
Throw Them All Out.
As detailed by Bloomberg, “Pelosi and her husband, Paul, with a net worth
estimated at $40 million, bought shares in the initial public offering of
credit-card company Visa Inc. in 2008, when Pelosi was speaker of the House
… They bought the shares just before legislation died that would have
limited the fees credit-card issuers could charge retailers. The shares more
than doubled in the next two months.”
Pelosi has also invited San Francisco investment banker William Hambrecht to
serve as an expert at economic forums on Capitol Hill on multiple occasions
, even speaking to reporters by his side at the U.S. Capitol, without
disclosing the fact that Hambrecht is her son’s boss and her husband Paul’
s business partner. One of the business deals struck by Paul Pelosi and
Hambrecht yielded more than $100,000 in income for the Pelosi family in 2010.
While serving as Speaker of the House, Pelosi repeatedly overlooked
corruption by her fellow partisans. The evidence suggests this “ethics
blind spot” extends too frequently to her own activities. Pelosi’s
penchant for abusing the perks of her office is reprehensible.
Back to Top
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY): One year after the House of Representatives
voted 333-79 to “censure” Rep. Charles Rangel for serious incidents of
corruption, Rangel remains in Congress. And, in fact, the very colleagues
who shamed him in the well of Congress for his ethics violations, including
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, now stand by his side.
What does this prove? That Rangel did not receive proper punishment for the
13 violations articulated in the House Ethics Committee report, including
the following allegations:
Forgetting to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income he earned from his
off-shore rental property. (Rangel was formerly in charge of the committee
responsible for writing tax policy.)
Misusing his congressional office, staff and resources to raise money
for his private Rangel Center for Public Service, to be housed at the City
College of New York. (He also put the squeeze on donors who had business
before his House Ways and Means Committee, and used the congressional “free
mail” privilege to solicit funds.)
Misusing his residentially-zoned Harlem apartment as a campaign
headquarters.
Failing to report $600,000 in income on his official congressional
financial disclosure reports, which contained “numerous errors and
omissions.”
And these are just the ethics violations under the Ethics Committee’s
microscope. The Committee did not even consider other serious corruption
charges against Rangel. For example, it has been alleged that Rangel
preserved a tax loophole for an oil company in exchange for a Rangel Center
donation and used improper influence to maintain ownership of his highly
coveted rent-controlled apartment — the same apartment he improperly used
for campaign activities.
Rangel should have been expelled from the House of Representatives a year
ago. Instead he remains in power and on Judicial Watch’s “Most Wanted”
list as a “Dishonorable Mention.”
Back to Top
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: What did Health and
Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius discuss during all of those
secret Obamacare meetings she held with Vice President Biden and Big Labor
leaders? Obamacare waivers would be an excellent guess.
In September 2011, HHS announced an arbitrary cut-off to waiver applications
, which had skyrocketed to 1,472 unions and companies seeking to get out
from underneath the Obama administration’s healthcare overhaul. At the time
of the cut-off, approximately 50% of the waivers granted covered employees
of unions, even though union workers represent about 12% of the total
workforce!
From the beginning, HHS has kept these waivers shrouded in secrecy. Judicial
Watch filed a lawsuit against HHS on December 30, 2010, and yet the agency
refuses to explain to the American people how decisions were made regarding
which organizations received or did not receive a waiver.
While HHS was disproportionately doling out waivers to unions, JW also
obtained documents from HHS that provide new details on a massive, taxpayer-
funded, multimedia campaign designed to promote Obamacare. The total cost of
this campaign, which notably targets Obama’s electoral coalition, could
reach as much as $200 million over the next five years.
And this is how HHS describes the key to success for this campaign: “Health
and program-related messages are processed by the target audience according
to a particular reality, which he or she experiences. Attitudes, feelings,
values, needs, desires, behaviors and beliefs all play a part in the
individual’s decision to accept information and make a behavioral change.”
In other words, the Obama administration is paying hired guns a lot of your
money to manipulate American taxpayers into “accepting” the Obama way and
“changing” their behavior.
This is certainly what HHS was trying to do with a series of three Medicare
television advertisements featuring actor Andy Griffith. As Judicial Watch
uncovered through FOIA, the Obama administration spent $3,184,000 in
taxpayer funds to produce and air the advertisements on national television
in September and October 2010. According to FactCheck.org, a project of the
University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, the
advertisements intentionally misinformed the American people.
And then there’s healthcare rationing. The Centers for Medicaid and
Medicare (CMS), which is under the auspices of HHS, proposed that Provenge,
a Food and Drug Administration-approved treatment for prostate cancer, be
placed under a controversial “review.” After enormous public scrutiny, CMS
relented and recommended the potentially lifesaving drug be covered by
insurance. According to a Judicial Watch investigation, while the Obama
administration claimed the cost of Provenge had nothing to do with their
review process, records obtained by JW suggest otherwise. (Medicare, the FDA
, and private companies are legally prohibited from denying approval of a
medical treatment based solely on cost.)
And then there is Sebelius’s war on the Catholic Church and other “
conservative” religious organizations. Sebelius’s HHS has written
Obamacare regulations to punish long-held religious views that don’t
comport with liberal ideology and would force hundreds of religious
institutions to drop insurance coverage or risk running afoul of Sebelius’s
pro-abortion Obamacare regulatory scheme.
The constitutionality of Obamacare may ultimately be decided by the U.S.
Supreme Court. But in the meantime, Kathleen Sebelius has turned HHS into a
political machine, using underhanded tactics to stack the deck in favor of
Obamacare, while greasing Big Labor and other Obama political campaign
allies.
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