I cannot stand to keep hearing Curt Weldon lying by saying that he did nothing wrong or that the House Ethics committee did not find that he did anything wrong (that's a joke in itself). Even Michael Smerconish is having a hard time believing this when he interviewed him yesterday. More below.
The
latest on Crazy Curt claiming he didn't do anything wrong.
His campaign cited the letter this week in a mailer that blames the FBI probe of Weldon's daughter and former campaign adviser on "national Democrats and their left-wing cronies."
"Fact: In 2004, Congressman Weldon voluntarily requested the House Ethics Committee to investigate these allegations. Result: Case Closed," the flier reads.
But Weldon says his attorney, William Winning, has told him not to release the letter, and the ethics committee isn't talking.
But even Smerconish isn't buying this silly explanation.
"This could take you down," he said, dismissing Weldon's explanation.
"There's a disconnect here. I don't know what it is," Smerconish said. "I am a lawyer. I can think of no legal justification, based only superficially (on) what I know about the case, where your counsel would deny you the opportunity to hand over a clean bill of health from an entity that has already investigated these facts, particularly where you run the risk of losing two weeks from today unless the public gets some assurance that it has been looked at.
"It makes no sense," he continued. "I'd be on the phone in three minutes from now if I were you, calling the lawyer and saying `You better release this and get it out there to the media.'"
But the worst part about this is that Curt Weldon already knew about corruption with ITERA and still vouched for them and still got his daughter setup to provide public relations for them as reported by Ken Silverstien in Harpers.
This is all very interesting when you consider that Weldon was aggressively flacking for ITERA even after he received a detailed briefing that outlined how ITERA reaped the benefits of Gazprom's corruption. I was able to obtain a copy of this briefing, which was prepared by a Russian businessman who worked closely with Weldon. In the letter the businessman stated that ITERA had quickly emerged as a multibillion dollar energy firm for one reason: "the cover of Gazprom higher management and its personal interest in [ITERA's] prosperity."
Had Weldon been interested, a simple Google search would have turned up plenty of dirt on ITERA. Between late 2000 and early 2001, a number of prominent publications, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, had written about shady dealings at Gazprom. Beginning in the late 1990s, the conglomerate sold off companies and assets reportedly worth nearly $6 billion, for which it received little more than $300 million.
And Curt knew all this in 2002 at the same time his daughter, Karen Weldon was setting up her first PR firm.
The six-page briefing Petrosyan prepared was undated but, according to its introductory section, was delivered to Weldon in 2002 following "the summer holiday season." This suggests that the congressman received it around September of that year--at exactly the moment ITERA was finalizing its fat deal with Karen Weldon. The briefing, which was clearly prepared at Weldon's request, opened with its author thanking the congressman for the "high faith" that was being placed in him and expressing gratitude for the "opportunity of cooperation that you opened to me." Petrosyan then offered a lengthy survey of the "general political and economic picture taking place in Russia today," before turning his attention to ITERA.
You are a liar Curt. And the best you can do is blame Democrats for your slimy behavior.
Joe Sestak for Congress