CT-Sen: Does Joe Care Where His Money Comes From?

There have been some calls by regular contributors to DailyKos that Ned Lamont, Joe Lieberman's primary challenegr-to-be, should not be raising money from out of state.

According to Forward in New York, Joe's not above going out of state himself.

Senator Joseph Lieberman met last week with some Orthodox leaders at the home of Milton Balkany, a rabbi whose legal troubles led President Bush's campaign and a New York mayoral candidate to return contributions linked to him.

More below the fold.

[Balkany is a] well-connected political fund-raiser once dubbed the "Brooklyn Bundler" by the good-government watchdog group Common Cause, Balkany has been at the center of controversies dating back some years, which have led to various accusations but no criminal convictions.

In August 2003, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York charged Balkany, president and director of the Bais Yaakov School in the Boro Park section of Brooklyn, with theft of government property, false claims, and wire fraud and obstruction of justice for allegedly misappropriating a $700,000 grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The charges prompted President Bush's campaign to return $4,000 that Balkany, a self-described Republican, had raised for the 2004 re-election run, the Forward reported in 2003. In March 2004, the charges were dropped when prosecutors came to a deferred prosecution agreement with Balkany that allowed him to return the money.

The article quotes Lieberman aides and supporters as saying the meeting was not a fund raiser, but none of it rings true.

•  Guess not.

  Apparently not.

  by orthogonal on Thu Jan 19, 2006 at 06:17:43 PM PDT