On December 21, 1996, John and Alice Martin were listening to John's police scanner while driving to Lake City, Florida to do some Christmas shopping, when they happened on a curious conversation. At the time, the nationwide cell phone network was analog: there was no such thing as digital scrambling, and cell phones broadcast in the clear on frequencies that could be picked up by exactly the kind of police scanner that John Martin had recently received as a birthday present. Most cell phone owners understood this, and did not use their phones for purposes such as, for example, conspiring to do an end run around House Ethics Committee charges. Most cell phone users were not as dumb as John Boehner.
Because Boehner did own a cell phone at the time, and it was his signal that John and Alice Martin picked up on their police scanner while doing their Christmas shopping. And this wasn't just any phone call, oh no it wasn't:
KWAME HOLMAN: Among those participating in the conference call with Boehner were Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey, Republican Whip Tom Delay, New York Congressman Bill Paxon, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, discussing possible responses to Ethics Committee charges against Gingrich to be disclosed later that day.
The Ethics Committee charges the assembled Republicans were discussing would eventually end the career of the 58th Speaker of the House.
As Mother Jones later explained, the story isn't pretty:
In short, he used a network of consulting firms, educational institutions, and even a charity for inner-city teens to promote a set of clearly partisan political goals designed to sweep Republicans into power in Washington. Gingrich's web of interconnected organizations formed the early prototype for the multimillion-dollar public and private network he established after leaving public office, known now as "Newt Inc."
Anyway, back to the phone call. See,
Gingrich had made a deal with the Ethics Committee not to orchestrate a response to its charges, and yet here he was, on tape, orchestrating a response to the charges:
KWAME HOLMAN: Included on the tape reportedly is this conversation: Congressman Paxon: “If we have several hours or a day go by when our members are out there without a response, it will be a disaster. That’s right.” Congressman Armey: “Right.” Paxon: “When will we see your statement, Newt?”. Speaker Gingrich: “My guess is–and I think they are running about 15 minutes late–my guess is we will have our statement out before noon.”
The Martins, who were longtime Democrats, immediately recognized the importance of what they were hearing, and turned their tape over to Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), who at the time was the ranking Democrat on the Ethics Committee. Two days later, the contents of the tape were on the front page of the
New York Times, detailing for the whole world exactly how much contempt John Boehner and his GOP cronies had for the institutions of the House of Representatives.
Friends, if this were a Hollywood movie, I'd be able to end this diary by telling you about the prison sentences Gingrich and Boehner went on to serve. But alas, this is a reality-based community, and so I am forced to stick with the truth. Unfortunately, Boehner is the kind of person who files lawsuits to distract the populace from his lack of ethics, and he—or rather, his lawyers, because Boehner is an idiot—eventually managed to convince a court that the real problem here was not Boehner's crimes themselves, but that Rep. McDermott was party to informing the world about them, and in what can only be described as a historic miscarriage of justice, Boehner eventually won more than $1 million in damages from McDermott for his selfless act in service of the public good. So this story doesn't exactly have a happy ending. But even if he can hoodwink the courts, Boehner can't erase history. So as we prepare to withstand days of disingenous hagiography for the least competent Speaker in anyone's memory, I think it's important to remember just exactly how crooked John Boehner truly is.