This is some story. We've known for quite some time that the House Ethics Committee is investigating Rep. Alan Grayson for possibly violating House rules by operating a hedge fund, but the New York Times offers some stunning new particulars on how Grayson runs his business. Marketing materials for his fund explain that Grayson specializes in "markets in turmoil due to economic, political, or natural disasters" and cites an infamous quote attributed to Baron Rothschild that “the time to buy is when there's blood in the streets." These kinds of sentiments are usually propounded by vulture capitalists, not self-styled progressives.
There are many other troubling details in this report, but the most noteworthy comes from a chain of private emails from last June obtained by the Times. In it, Grayson's former campaign manager Doug Dodson begged his boss to just shut down the fund because it had turned into a "drip, drip, drip story that never goes away and we always come out on the wrong end" (while still delusionally blaming it on a conspiracy of reporters who "want to write this story badly"). Grayson refused, saying "the media might take that as an admission of wrongdoing."
What makes these emails all the more remarkable is that someone from Grayson's camp leaked them to the paper in an effort to blow Grayson up. It's not clear who, but multiple email addresses in the cc: field have been redacted—and Grayson's parted ways with a lot of staffers recently, including Dodson. It says a lot about the congressman that a (presumably former) confidante has grown so disgusted he or she now wants to stop Grayson at all costs.
Grayson, of course, still can't understand why anyone has a problem with anything he's done, saying, "Honestly, it's very frustrating to me. This whole insinuation that I have done something improper." Maybe if everyone around you thinks you've done something wrong and you're pretty much the only person who thinks you haven't, you ought to reconsider.