Rep. Allan Mollohan, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Ethics Committee, has stepped aside from his post, CNN just reported. A little more on the flip...
I'm sure others will talk about this more later, but there have been questions raised about Mollohan's finances, profiting from earmarks in approriations bills, etc. In a
NYT article a few days ago, Mollohan denied the charges.
I read the April 8 NY Times article about this whole thing, and while the conservative legal group, the National Legal and Policy Center that raised this whole thing is clearly just looking to hang the collar of "corruption" on Democrats, I came away from that article feeling like this guy has been involved in shady dealings. It's now archived and only available to subscribers, but the first paragraph read...
As lawmakers have increasingly slipped pet projects into federal spending bills over the past decade, one lawmaker has used his powerful perch on the House Appropriations Committee to funnel $250 million into five nonprofit organizations that he set up.
The rest of the article detailed how some of Mollohan's friends and colleagues then were picked to run these nonprofits, that these nonprofits subsisted almost solely on federal funds, and that the people who ran these nonprofits - remember, Mollohans friends - then contributed money to Mollohan's campaign, money they got, I would assume, from their work for the nonprofit, which was pretty much all federal dollars that Mollohan got earmarked for these projects.
Maybe there is a perfectly legal and logical explanation for it all and maybe the NY Times left out a lot of details, relying too heavily on the conservative group's 500-page complaint to the U.S. Attorney in D.C. But, to me, it really sounded like it stunk.