Rumors, Allegations Fly about GOP Reps in the Dukester-MZM Scandal

Now that former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, has started his eight year sentence for taking bribes from defense contractor MZM Inc., the capitol is awash in rumors about the next targets for the chopping block. Preemptive Karma has unconfirmed scuttlebutt about four powerful House Republicans from California:

A DC political operative has told me that Brent Wilkes, one of the individuals charged with bribing Republican Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham, has struck a deal with prosecutors to testify.

Wilkes will implicate four more Republicans for possible criminal activity: Richard Pombo, John Doolittle, Duncan Hunter, and Jerry Lewis.

The operative says that they are “highly certain” that this information is accurate. This hasn’t hit any media outlets as far as I know so I have no way of second sourcing it.

So who are these guys?

• Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) – member of the Appropriations Committee – accused of taking $30,000 in MZM related money
• Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) – chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is also making waves in the Dubai Ports World scandal by breaking his rigid lockstep with President Bush saying he will actively oppose the ports leases – accused of taking $28,500 in MZM related money
• Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) – currently chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, formerly chair of the defense appropriations subcommittee – accused of taking $32,000 in MZM related money
• Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) – chairman of the House Committee on Resources -, an anti-environmentalist whack job who is systematically undoing 30 years of federal protections on land, water and species and apparently a cog in the Abramoff payola wheel – took $7,000 from Abramoff and $2,000 from Cunningham which he later donated to charity

A glaring omission from the list is Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Florida). As Trish reported, Harris is up to her eyeballs in the DZM scandal:

Harris took somewhere near $50,000, funneled through employees of defense contractor MZM Inc., whose employees also favored Duke. After the employees complained about coercion, Harris offered — in the style of the DeLay-linked — to return the payola.

According to the guilty plea of MZM executive Mitchell Wade, he gave the donations to Harris and then:

“[Over] dinner, Wade and [Harris] discussed, among other topics, the possibility of MZM’s hosting a fundraiser for [Harris] later in the year, and the possibility of obtaining funding and approval for a Navy counterintelligence program in [Harris’s] district and locating an MZM office in that district. Wade later prepared a proposal for the Navy counterintelligence program and submitted it to Harris’s staff.”

Harris has a little wiggle room because the program was not funded.

Still Bob Geiger found this twisted mix of hypocrisy and irony that is the identifying marker of the American rightwing:

Florida Representative Katherine Harris, currently a candidate for U.S. Senate and formerly the person who helped engineer George W. Bush’s theft of the 2000 presidential election, will headline the Reclaiming America for Christ conference to be held in Fort Lauderdale this month.

“Reclaiming America for Christ 2006 is your chance to get the tools and training, ideas and energy you need to change America for the better, “ crows the web site for the conference, to be held March 17-18. “Our nation hangs in the balance and it will take men and women – equipped with strategies that work – to reset the wildly spinning moral compass of our great land.”

Harris will give a talk on March 18 called “Bringing Faith to the Public Forum.”

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