Justice Dept. Should Investigate Bush-era Congressional ‘Deal-making’
Related subjects: Denver Lessing, Ethics, Legislation, Open Government, Opinion, Quid-pro-quo: Corruption, Transparency Yield, U.S. Law, U.S. Politics, U.S. news Comments (0)
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is alleging “back-room dealmaking” and what he believes to be a misuse of office in Sen. Ben Nelson’s securing additional federal funding for his state’s Medicaid program, which is facing a severe budget shortfall. He wants the attorney general of his state to investigate whether anything unconstitutional was done in the dealmaking process. But Graham was part of numerous “dealmaking” sessions in the Bush-era Senate, in which corruption was not only alleged but was more or less publicly demonstrable.
Sen. Graham said that negotiating with individual senators amounted to offering “bribes”, and wants the specifics to be investigated, though nothing that is not part of the normal legislative process was done in the case of healthcare reform. On the other hand, there remain numerous cases in which real allegations of illegal threats and illegal bribery were alleged but have never been investigated. In the most infamous case, Republican House leaders not only extended voting in order to twist arms and let lobbyists roam the floor of the House making offers and claims to no-voters, but they allegedly threatened Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI) and offered a cash bribe (in the form of campaign money).
That was 2003. Smith voted no anyway, then went public. The House Democratic leadership sent a letter to then Attorney General John Ashcroft [PDF], urging a thorough investigation, and alleging the following:
Conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote in a November 27 column, “On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father’s vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat.”
This is a clear violation of USC Title 18, Section 201 which addresses the bribery of public officials and witnesses. The law states, a person commits bribery if he or she “directly or indirectly, corruptly gives, offers or promises anything of value to any public official or person who has been selected to be a public official, or offers or promises any public official or any person who has been selected to be a public official to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent to influence any official act…:”
The Attorney General himself was accused of helping to “foster this kind of atmosphere” by ignoring numerous cases of similar allegations substantiated by credible testimony and even hard evidence. The letter chastised Ashcroft, saying: “Mr. Attorney General, your repeated unwillingness to uphold the law is creating a wild west atmosphere in the Capitol where rules and regulations mean nothing. Republican officeholders feel free to openly and repeatedly break the law.”
It would later be learned that much of the Republican “dealmaking” was in fact part of an illegal campaign of bribery, engineered through the office of “super-lobbyist” Jack Abramoff, with ties to key Republican leaders, a number of whom would later resign in disgrace or be charged with federal crimes. It’s little wonder Sen. Graham is wary of “bribes” becoming part of the legislative process.
But, while most of the specific cases in which it was alleged Republican Congressional leadership deliberately engineered votes and voting processes to illegally exclude Democrats, allow lobbyists onto the floor of the House of Representatives, or even make offers and threats to members of their own caucus, remain unexplored by prosecutors, Sen. Graham is calling for an investigation into legislative negotiations in which there is no evidence anything other than legislative matters were negotiated. This raises the question of Sen. Graham’s own standing on the issue of Congressional corruption.
During the Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, Sen. Graham made at least two oddly defensive comments that raised questions about his possible involvement with Mr. Abramoff. While Graham has not been implicated in the investigations into Abramoff’s illegal dealings, one of his major political backers was. The corruption allegations involving Abramoff’s network in South Carolina have never been thoroughly investigated.
What’s more, Abramoff reportedly claimed he knew the US would invade Iraq even before the attacks of 11 September 2001. If that’s so, and Abramoff’s corruption network was involved in a deliberate attempt to manufacture a war, or at least to “manufacture consent” in Congress, it could be the most important instance of systematic corruption of the Congress in the nation’s history. It has never been thoroughly investigated.
Sen. Graham has, mysteriously, never called for sweeping prosecutions of these already very well known cases of apparent or confirmed corruption. He has not asked that members of Congress involved in those incidents be investigated or prosecuted. Quite the contrary, he very insistently declared, during Justice Alito’s confirmation hearings that “Guilt by association is going to drive good men and women away from wanting to sit where you’re sitting. And we’re going to go through a bit of this ourselves as congressmen and senators.”
Graham clearly has sought to promote the idea that Bush-era Congressional corruption, under Republican leadership, should be ignored, brushed aside in favor of moving ahead. But while Sen. Graham now wants to open frivolous corruption investigations for whether an effort to help Nebraska cover the costs of providing medical treatment to the poor amounts to a “kickback” to Sen. Nelson, there is no way to avoid the problem of the Bush-era allegations that remain unexplored.
Sen. Graham should either call for a new round of thorough investigation into the allegations of systematic corruption, illegal intimidation, bribery and misuse of office, related to Jack Abramoff’s network, the Congressional leadership under Tom DeLay and the planning —and selling— of the war in Iraq. The links between Abramoff’s network and the campaign operations of Sen. Graham, Sen. DeMint, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, should also be part of that investigation, because there is little explanation for Graham’s meek and defensive response to corruption allegations against his own party, given his reflexively aggressive assault on Sen. Nelson, aside from knowing tolerance of corruption in his own party.
That might be inferring too far, but then, this writing is just an exploration of the kind of reasoning Sen. Graham appears to be applying to the healthcare process. For him, it appears that any legislative outcome he finds unfavorable to himself must be the product of corruption, while any allegations of corruption unfavorable to his party must be unfair or false. There’s something not right about that approach to the question of corruption. Is it Sen. Graham alone who should decide the facts?
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