Hello, Gentle and Faithful Fans of California's most beautilicious and Pumpkin strewn Congressional district, the CA- 04, accursed with one of the worst Congressmen, John Doolittle, (R, Republic of Sierra Dominion Deutchland)
When we last left our story, John Doolittle was feeling put upon because DOJ lawyers were subpoenaing him in two different legal matters, and Johnny did not want to come outside and play in their sandboxes.. The Nerve of those evildoers Dept. of Justice lackies!
Today is a monumental day in the history of CA- 04, because today Brent Wilkes' trial on bribing former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R, Penitentiary) is resuming, and there's not a bloomin' thing Johnny can Doo about it, short of continuing to threaten a Constitutional Crisis with a recycled Watergate lawyer, and thumbing his nose at any mention of new subpoenas.
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This is the trial the Rove, Cheney, Gonzales, and & Bush Administration did not want you to see. During it, they will create distractions. They created the entire Gonzogate US Attorney firings brou ha- ha just to get rid of US Atty Carol Lam, trying to delay this trial. It was all about Carol Lam. Always.
This diary will be your primer on what's going on, a little backstory.
Judge: His Honor Larry Alan Burns
District: US District Court for Southern California, San Diego
Defendant: Brent Wilkes, former Defense Contractor, Lobbyist, and Business Associate of the CIA's Dusty Foggo, also charged
Attorney for Wilkes the defendant, Mark Geragos
Assist. US Attorney for the Prosecution, Phillip Halpern
Jury: 5 men, 7 women
25 charges of bribery, involving "Duke" Cunningham, 11 dropped on money transactions, that leaves 14 (bribery, money laundering, etc), timespan 1997 to 2004. ADCS is Wilke's Company based in Poway, CA
Plea: not guilty
Expected to testify, ex Cong.Duke Cunningham, cooperating, Cunningham staffers, Wilkes's nephew, Pentagon officials, maybe several Congressmen and Senators, White House staffers
current Timeline:
Oct 2 tues/ initial subpoenas withdrawn on 12 congressmen witnesses, 5 very likely to be re subp'ed, Congressmen or ex Cong. Denny Hastert, John Doolittle, Duncan Hunter, Daryl Issa, Jerry Lewis
Oct 3, jury selection, opening Prosecutor's statement
Oct 9 tues Trial resumes opening statements by Halpern and then Geragos
http://www.chron.com/...
tuesday, 10.2.07 The Huston Chronicle, Subpoenas withdrawn in bribery case
In the year 2005, Congressman Randall "Duke" Cunningham (R, Penetentiary) pled guilty to bribery charges involving the DOD. This week, one of the Defense Contractors who is accused of doing the bribery, Brent Wilkes, ( indicted by fired US Attorney Carol Lam on her last day in office. Lam successfully prosecuted Cunningham before her firing), finally goes to trial in Southern California. Wilkes is charged with giving Cunningham over $600,000 in bribes and other "benefits" in exchange for nearly $90 million in no bid contracts. (Yes, this trial will include... hookers 'n hot tubs.) Part of Wilke's defense is going to be that Cunningham didn't act alone, that there was a Congressional shakedown system involving many more Congressmen, and Wilkes may also try to claim he was under "duress and necessity," which means he felt threatened or coerced into performing these activities . http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/...
The trial subpoenas for the "dirty dozen" Congressmen were about to be quashed by a federal judge, so the attorney withdrew them.
But Wilke's attorney Mark Geragos said he's planning on refiling new ones.
{{{ Even though Geragos dropped the initial subpoenas, he told reporters later that he planned to file new ones against former House Speaker U.S. Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and California Republican Reps. John Doolittle, Duncan Hunter, Darrell Issa and Jerry Lewis.
Geragos said he was trying to serve a subpoena on White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten. The White House had no comment. }}}
The Congressmen who were the targets of Gerago's inquiry were using government attorneys to fight the subpoena process, claiming that they had Congressional privilege by current law because the matter involved legislative work. The federal judge said that Geragos had not yet been specific enough about the types of questions he intended to ask, Geragos claimed he did not want to tip his hand yet.
{{{It's almost as if these House members are saying, 'How dare you subpoena us?'" Geragos said. "But we've got members who were on these plane flights with Mr. Cunningham, who were going to these dinners hosted by Mr. Wilkes. There's a whole host of events that have nothing to do with the legislative process. }}}
Geragos filed several motions Friday Sept 28 trying to exclude the hooker 'n hot tubs evidence from the trial. From The Hill, 9/29/07:
http://thehill.com/...
{{{ In his motion, Geragos said the government’s purpose in presenting testimony regarding the alleged hiring of prostitutes during a trip to Hawaii is to “sully Mr. Wilkes in the eyes of the jury.”
“Mr. Wilkes was married during the alleged incident, and the government seeks to drag out a dirty story of adultery and vice, not to prove any element of the alleged offense here, but to tar Mr. Wilkes as an adulterer and criminal of the most tawdry sort,” Geragos wrote in the motion.}}}
Alas, it wasn't only in Hawaii that the alleged hooking activitiy took place. From TPM muckraker's archives on convicted Defense Contractor Mitchell Wade, http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/... via the Wall Street Journal, 4/27/06
http://online.wsj.com/...
{{{ In recent weeks, (last year, 2006) Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have fanned out across Washington, interviewing women from escort services, potential witnesses and others who may have been involved in the arrangement. In an interview, the assistant general manager of the Watergate Hotel confirmed that federal investigators had requested, and been given, records relating to the investigation and rooms in the hotel. But he declined to disclose what the records show.
Mr. (Mitchell) Wade in February pleaded guilty to giving bribes of more than $1 million to Mr. Cunningham, including cash, antiques and payment for yachts. Mr. Wade, who hasn't been sentenced yet, is cooperating with prosecutors. According to people with knowledge of the investigation, Mr. Wade told investigators that Mr. Cunningham periodically phoned him to request a prostitute, and that Mr. Wade then helped to arrange for one. A limousine driver then picked up the prostitute as well as Mr. Cunningham, and drove them to one of the hotel suites, originally at the Watergate Hotel, and subsequently at the Westin Grand. }}}
The limousine company which is alleged to have been transporting the "poker party" guests and the hookers around Washington to and fro the hospitality suite at the Watergate Hotel and later the Grand Westin is Shirlington Limousine Service, another Homeland Security Defense Contractor.
TPM Muckraker had a look at Shirlington last year, and they found some interesting facts: It's run by a convicted felon, Chris Baker, sometimes it had its Federal Motor Carrier license revoked, sometimes its vehicles got repossessed right in the middle of a run, it has at least 4 different names, and it has multiple government contracts. $519,823 Dept Housing and Urban Development, $142,000 Federal Highway Admin, and over $25 MILLION TOTAL with the $21 million Homeland Security/DOD contract. http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/...
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
In other words, they're the prototypical type of contractor one would expect Republicans to favor for shuttling around sensitive, secure government entities.
And about those poker parties....
5/28/06 SanDiego Union Tribune Defense Contractor's house of cards
http://www.signonsandiego.com/...
{{{ /snip
Participants included CIA agents, lobbyists, defense contractors and, occasionally, staffers and members of Congress....
Cunningham was one of the most influential visitors to the poker games, thanks to his position on both the House Appropriations and Intelligence committees. The congressman sometimes regaled the CIA officers with tales about his days as a Navy fighter pilot in Vietnam, said one of Wilkes' former business associates.
According to two former Wilkes associates, Cunningham used his dual position to help Wilkes gain contracts from the CIA's “black budget” after the Pentagon began criticizing some of the work Wilkes was doing for the Defense Department. Unlike most Pentagon contracts, contracts in the black budget are shielded from public scrutiny.
Mitchell Wade, a former defense contractor and Wilkes associate who pleaded guilty in February (2006) to conspiracy in connection with the Cunningham bribery case, told investigators that Wilkes provided prostitutes for Cunningham at the Watergate, a source close to the investigation said. Wilkes strongly denies the charge. Wade is cooperating with authorities while awaiting sentencing. }}}
The article also talks about Wilke's multi million dollar contracts with the CIA, which he obtained with the help of his longtime friend, ex CIA top tier honcho Dusty Foggo. At the time the Cunningham scandal broke, Wilkes was negotiating for a huge, multi million dollar top secret air transportation contract with the CIA, in spite of having no experience in this line of work.
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In his opening statement to the jury Oct 3, from San Diego Union Tribune link,
http://www.signonsandiego.com/...
{{{Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip Halpern told the jury of five men and seven women that Wilkes “wove a web of bribery and corruption that literally stretched from coast to coast.”
The prosecutor minced few words when describing the arc of Wilkes' career, and underscored how the alleged bribery harmed the public treasury.
“(Wilkes) made this money by corrupting the system,” Halpern said. “He made it by stealing taxpayer funds. And he made it by buying a politician.”}}}
Maybe prosecutor Halpern should have made that plural, politician(s).
During some of the time span of the alleged crimes, from '97 to '04, both (ex) Rep.Duke Cunningham and Rep. John Doolittle were serving on the Appropriations Committee, which Doolittle (on this Committee 2001 to 2007) stepped down from this past April after his house in Oakton, VA was raided by the FBI.
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The John Doolittle and Brent Wilkes connection, a recap: 5/19/07 San Diego Union Tribune, Congressman Doolittle, wife profited from Cunningham linked Contractor
http://www.signonsandiego.com/...
Doolittle earmarked a 37 million dollar, no bid Defense contract for Wilke's "Perfect Wave." Brent Wilkes, in return, paid the Doolittle family $14,400 thru Julie Doolittle's collecting a 15% commission on her husband's campaign donations and those made to his PAC, the Superior California Political Action Committee. In the years 2002 through 2005, Wilkes and his lobbying team donated $118,000 to the effort to re elect Doolittle. The Pentagon nor the Navy never requested "Perfect Wave."
Now, how does this tie into the Jack Abramoff scandal?
Wilke's subcompany, Perfect Wave, hired a lobbying firm named the Alexander Strategy Group. It was founded by Ed and Wendy Buckham. Ed Buckham was the former Chief of Staff of ex Republican Majority Congressional Leader Tom Delay. Alexander Strategy Group hired Christine Delay, Tom Delay's wife, from 1998 to 2002, as a "consultant." Alex. Strat. Group also "hired" Julie Doolittle, John Doolittle's wife, to do "event planning" (or "bookeeping") for a non profit group that Buckham invented called the Korea- US Exchange Council. Both wives, Christine and Julie, were paid monthly retainers of several thousand dollars over a period of several years from these various non profit organizations, funded generously by lobbyists, until Alexander Strategy died out in 2006, a victim of the bad reputation caused by Abramoff's indictment and conviction on corruption, and Tom Delay's resignation.
Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff had several other high dollar clients of the firm, and those clients provided a large percentage of Alexander Strategy's revenue. In a complicated scheme, the government of Malaysia hired another consulting firm, Bell Haven Consultants, to hire Alexander Strategy Group to lobby conservative Republican Congresspeople and the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation. The Mississippi Band of the Choctaw Indians was also a client of Jack Abramoff's, and some of the Malaysian money was laundered and its route sidetracked thru the Choctaw's payments to Abramoff when he was playing off one Indian tribe against another for Casino licensing rights.
On September 27, 2001, sixteen days after America's 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Center in NYC, Alexander Strategy Group started working for Belle Haven , seeking to "provide a better image of Malaysia to the USA."
Belle Haven, Abramoff, and Alexander Strategy shared the same office in Hong Kong. A lot of people don't recall Abramoff's Far East connections, this will remind the reader.
Ed Buckham also formed another lobbying non profit called the US- Malaysia Exchange, as well as the US Family Network. 2 links from the WAPO, in 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Before he pled guilty to Conspiracy in March 2006, Tony Rudy, the former Delay staffer turned Abramoff associate lobbyist, would eventually end up doing lobbying and earmark solicitation for the City of Lincoln in California's 4th Congressional district, which is Doolittle's, and he and his wife would continue to donate money to Doolittle's campaign coffers. Tony Rudy is currently cooperating with federal prosecutors. This must be making the Doolittles at least a little nervous. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/...
There is another former employee/associate of Doolittle's whom is intentionally flying low under the radar these days. His name is Kevin Ring. He is an ex- employee of John Doolittle , John Ashcroft, and then Jack Abramoff when Ring and Abramoff both worked for lobbying firm Greenberg Traurig. He has not, as far as anyone knows, been charged with anything yet, inspite of pleading the 5th against self incrimination, during the Senate's Indian Affairs Committee hearings in 2005. This makes him a dangerous man. Ring is said to have acted as a go between for Doolittle and Greenberg Traurig in getting Julie Doolittle hired as an "event planner" for Abramoff's Capital Athletic Foundation. Julie Doolittle "worked" for Abramoff and GreenbergTraurig from Jan 2003 to Feb 2004. Kevin Ring abruptly quit his last lobbying job nearly simultaneously as the FBI raided Doolittle's home back on April 13, 2007. Since then, Kevin Ring has been mysteriously quiet in public.
The Wilkes/Wade/Cunningham/Doolittle Connection, or, why could Atty Geragos want to subbie White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and drag him into the court proceedings?
Brent Wilkes had a protege and sometimes business lead finder. His name is... Mitchell Wade.
Cunningham Scandal, a White House Link? from David Corn, 3/07
http://www.davidcorn.com/...
Cong. Henry Waxman (D, CA, Ethics) sends a note March 2007 to Joshua Bolten, Bush's Chief Of Staff, and wants to know about the July 15,2002 contract with Mitchell Wade's MZM company for $140,000.
Amount of contract= what Duke paid for the yacht DUKE- STIR Duke bought in summer of 2002. Hmmm.
Contract was for " computers and office furniture" for VP Cheney's office.
September 2002, 2 months later, Wade gets $250,000,000 (250 million) contract with Gen Services Admin.
Wade's bribed Duke Cunningham a million bucks, and he too has pled guilty, and is cooperating with federal investigators.
By now you may have noticed the phrase "cooperating with federal investigators" is getting repeated a lot, and no, it's not a typo.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
Brent Wilkes, Mail Safe, and Doolittle, TPM Talking Points Memo, March 27, 2007
According to the book The Wrong Stuff, The Extraordinary Saga of Randy Duke Cunningham, by Marcus Stern, Kramer, Calbreath, & Condon, Mitchell Wade's top secret, couldn't be revealed contract with the federal government was for.... screening the President of the US's mail for biohazards.
After the 2002 Anthrax scare, which had deadly anthrax spores from an unknown sender showing up in the US mail sent to Congress and to some in the news media, Brent Wilkes also proposed a contract for "Mailsafe" which would have collected mail at a central location, scanned it, and emailed it to Congress. Doolittle tried to help his friend Wilkes secure the contract.
{{{ The House Administration Committee, on which Doolittle sat, oversees the congressional mail system. Doolittle told his colleagues about MailSafe and introduced them to Wilkes, but the project never got off the ground.
Note the reference to the House Administration Committee. That was the committee then chaired by another Abramoff buddy -- the now-imprisoned Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH). And Ney, as he'd earlier done for Abramoff associate Adam Kidan, actually read into the House record an encomium to Wilkes. }}}
from the 3/19/06 San Diego Union Tribune
(ARC note. my dictionary says encomium is a eulogy, so I'm not sure if that is what is really meant here, since Wilkes is not deceased, but that's the word in the quote)
Besides Perfect Wave and Mailsafe,Wilkes attempted to get other government contracts from the Appropriations Committee during the 2002 to 2005 time frame, and continuted to donate to the Doolittles, with Julie collecting her 15%.
per the 3/19/06 San Diego Union Tribune link again, down at the page bottom: http://www.signonsandiego.com/...
{{{ John Doolittle's last known meeting with Wilkes came in May 2004, when Wilkes flew to Las Vegas to attend a fundraiser for the congressman's political action committee. Wilkes used his corporate jet to bring the keynote speaker, Tom DeLay, and one of DeLay's staffers.
Federal election records show that Julie Doolittle took a 15 percent commission for contributions made during the event at The Venetian hotel-casino, including an estimated $1,650 from the $11,000 donated by Wilkes, ADCS and Karl Gallant, a Buckham employee who was then lobbying on Wilkes' behalf.
Within weeks of the Las Vegas gathering, Wilkes' name surfaced in the Cunningham scandal, and congressional support for his projects dwindled. }}}
At the time of that Vegas Casino fundraiser, Doolittle, a Mormon, took criticism from some of his local constituency for not only having a fundraiser in Sin City, but at a Casino ! His actions seemed at odds with his public stances he had taken in the past, seeking vigorously to deny new Casino development both in his home district and in other venues, such as Mississippi where the Choctaw tribe had hired Abramoff to lobby for them.
At the time of the FBI raid on his house this year in April, 2 days before the IRS tax filing deadline, Doolittle had been on his way to a local Chamber of Commerce meeting at the Oroville, CA Indian Casino when Julie called him to tell him the FBI was there at home with warrants. The irony has not been lost, but the coincidence is fascinating. This must be what Wilkes' Defense Attorney Geragos means when he says there were a "whole host of events that have nothing to do with the legislative process."
The Brent Wilkes bribery trial is expected to last about a month, and for Doolittle, it should be a very long one. Either he continues to ignore or fight the trial subpoena, and looks like he's hiding something as he runs up more legal bills, or he testifies where he does not have control over the line of questioning. If that testimony brings forth new information about Doolittle's activities involving Brent Wilkes, Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Kevin Ring, Tony Rudy, or his other aquaintances, he risks contradicting previous statements made to the Federal Agents, and if there is one thing my non legally trained mind understands, it is one does NOT make false statements to Federal Agents or you'll end up charged with a crime and go to jail or at least have to plead guilty to something. For someone like Doolittle, whom has repeatedly insisted he's done "nothing wrong," this could be the most dangerous month in his career, as he finds old ghosts coming back to haunt him.