A cover-up only works if both people are smart enough to keep their mouth shut. Unfortunately, the only thing Katherine Harris is good at covering is her face with two pounds of makeup. With her name surfacing this week in a bribery scandal, Harris has babbled one defense after another, with the inevitable consequence of her defenses running afoul of the facts.
Defense contractor Mitchell Wade has pled guilty to bribing California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. This week, it was revealed that he also funneled money to two more Republicans, Katherine Harris and Virgil Goode. (diaried by ksh01 here) Harris in particular recieved $32,000 in illegal campaign contributions.
Wade claims Harris didn't know about the bribes, and today, Harris released a statement to that effect. She's donated all the money to Habitat for Humanity. While Harris asserts that there was no quid pro quo deal in effect, her story doesn't match up with the facts. From Paul Kiel at TPMCafe:
What the heck had Wade, MZM's CEO, wanted from Harris in return for that money?
Harris has claimed, to me and other journalists, that she didn't have any idea. She insisted that she had assumed all those MZM-connected people -- who didn't live in Florida and whose $2,000 checks arrived in bundles -- just liked her stands on the issues and wanted to see her re-elected.
She did say Wade had been considering opening a plant of some sort in the Sarasota area. But she said she knew no details and didn't know exactly how that might inspire MZM to break the law to give her so much money, or why it would inspire MZM employees and spouses to send her as much as $4,000 each from their own wallets.
Even after learning Wade had bribed another congressman and had used illegal means to make far bigger donations to Harris than the law allows, she said she still had no idea what the heck MZM's motive was for giving her all that money. (Herald Tribune)
Harris, playing the poor, innocent victim. Yet to quote from Wade's plea agreement:
In his plea agreement, Wade acknowledged dining with Harris at a Washington restaurant in 2005 to discuss a possible fundraiser for her and obtaining funding for a Navy counterintelligence program involving his company. The plan called for a location in Harris' Sarasota district.
More below...
Harris now acknowledges the meeting, but claims they "discussed opening a defense plant in Sarasota that would create numerous high-skilled, high-wage jobs in my district." After that dinner, Harris wrote a letter the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee requesting the funding. The Subcommittee didn't grant her request.
Ok, so she maintains it wasn't a bribe, and that she wrote the letter out of a sincere desire to have the plant funded. So why won't she release the letter?
WASHINGTON - Katherine Harris, the Longboat Key congresswoman running for U.S. Senate, is refusing to honor a pledge to reveal her requests for federal earmarks - so-called pork barrel spending.
The material Harris is withholding includes a letter she wrote in April 2005 on behalf of a defense contractor who funneled illegal contributions to her 2004 campaign.
Harris made the pledge just five weeks ago, and is already breaking it (I wonder how that will play out with Florida voters?). She claims the letter has "privileged" information.
While Harris has been prancing around this week proclaiming her innocence and victimhood from the rooftops, the truth is that both the facts and Harris's history shift the burden on her to disprove the allegation of bribery. If you recall, Harris was involved in a similar scandal in 1998, when insurance executives from Riscorp admitted to illegally donating $20,000 to her 1994 campaign. Harris played dumb them too, even though it was her own campaign manager who changed addresses on Riscorp checks to keep them from being traced back to the company. So, keeping this history in mind, when Wade knocks on Harris's door and hands her a bundle of checks, and when he asks her to get funds for his company, and when she writes a letter to that effect, and when she refuses to release that letter despite a promise to do so--we're still supposed to take Harris's proclamation of innocence at face value? Harris may think she's playing it smart, but voters aren't that dumb.