Posted on 12/08/2005 9:07:54 AM PST by hardknocks
Rep. Alan Mollohan (W.Va.), the top Democrat on the House ethics committee, has received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions and gifts to a family foundation from MZM Inc. and another firm that did business with MZM.
The former owner of MZM, Mitchell Wade, is at the heart of the recent scandal that toppled ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.). The Californian pleaded guilty last week to accepting $2.4 million in bribes, fraud and tax evasion charges.
The donations to Mollohan were perfectly legal. But the fact that the top ethics cop for House Democrats received significant sums from the company behind Congress’ biggest bribery scheme in recent memory opens him up to conflict-of-interest questions in any future ethics investigation involving MZM.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has already called for a special bipartisan committee to investigate Cunningham’s relationship with Wade and MZM. And while Cunningham resigned from the House following his guilty plea, the House Intelligence Committee has initiated its own probe into his dealings with MZM and another defense contractor linked to Cunningham, ADCS Inc.
Some Republicans have privately suggested that the ethics committee would be a better forum for such an investigation. But Mollohan’s past relationship with MZM raises the possibility that the senior Democrat on the evenly divided panel might need to recuse himself from any such probe.
In an interview Tuesday, Mollohan refused to discuss the question of recusal, saying such issues are up to each Member who serves on the panel.
“It would not be appropriate to answer that question, and I’m not going to do that,” Mollohan said. “This whole question of recusing oneself because a certain individual is being looked at by the ethics committee is something the ethics committee would not encourage, on the assumption that Members are capable of deciding cases irrespective of the relationship with other Members.”
Under House ethics committee rules, any lawmaker serving on the panel may voluntarily disqualify himself or herself from any investigation. A written affidavit has to be submitted to the committee, which then has to approve the request. Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) would then appoint another lawmaker from the same party to act as a member of the committee during any proceedings relating to that investigation.
Despite the controversy surrounding MZM and its former owner, Mollohan also said he had “no intention” of returning any contribution from MZM. (See related story, p. 19.)
In fact, Mollohan said he was unaware that Summit PAC, his soft-money leadership political action committee, had received contributions from MZM or Wade until informed by Roll Call.
Summit PAC received a $20,000 contribution from MZM in October 2002, according to Federal Election Commission records. Such soft-money donations were legal at the time but were later banned by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.
Wade himself gave $1,000 in hard money to Summit PAC in October 2003, and MZM’s PAC donated $2,000 to the fund in October 2004.
“Until you called, I had no idea that MZM had even given to Summit PAC,” the lawmaker said. “The people who were putting together Summit PAC were responsible for getting them to contribute. I don’t know MZM and I don’t know” Wade.
One of those who created Summit PAC for Mollohan was Robert Hytner, vice chairman of Information Manufacturing Corp. of Rocket Center, W.Va. — a company that had a close but apparently troubled business relationship with MZM.
In 2002, IMC paired with MZM on what was to be the initial round of a $12 million Defense Department contract. The contract was issued for support work for the Pentagon’s Joint Counter-Intelligence Assessment Group, Congressional sources said. Mollohan, who serves as ranking member on the Appropriations subcommittee on Science, State, Justice, Commerce and related agencies, said he had no role in securing any funding for that program.
How IMC and MZM came to share the $12 million DOD contract is unclear. IMC was to open a 70-person intelligence operation in West Virginia, and MZM would have filled 30 of those slots. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) issued a press release in October 2002 in which Wade thanked Byrd for helping secure the funds for the program.
But at some point in early 2003, IMC lost control of the contract to MZM, which took it over and then failed to open a West Virginia branch, according to a source familiar with the incident. Inquiries were made with the Pentagon by members of the West Virginia delegation about why Defense awarded the entire program to MZM. But since the work was classified, the Defense Department offered little insight into what happened, the source said.
The Defense contract eventually grew to be worth roughly $50 million over four years, all of which went to MZM, added the source.
IMC and Hytner did not return several calls seeking information on the firm’s relationship with Wade and MZM.
IMC has donated heavily to Mollohan’s PAC and re-election campaigns. IMC gave $50,000 in soft money to Summit PAC in 2002. $10,000 of the IMC donation was reported the same day — Oct. 16, 2002 — that MZM contributed its $20,000 to Summit PAC. The other $40,000 in soft money from IMC was donated five weeks later. In addition, IMC executives and employees have given more than $53,000 in hard money to Summit PAC and Mollohan’s re-election campaign since 1998, according to the Web site PoliticalMoneyLine.com.
IMC also helped underwrite a 2001 golf tournament hosted by the Robert H. Mollohan Family Charitable Foundation, a charity named for Mollohan’s late father, a former House Member from West Virginia.
According to an IMC press release, the company made a “generous donation” to the charity. Mollohan serves as a the secretary for that foundation, which was created in 2000 to support educational programs in the Mountain State.
A large portion of the money raised for the Mollohan Foundation, which totaled $1.35 million during the past three years, derives from its annual golf tournament. As a charity, the Mollohan Foundation is not required to disclose its donors or how much they have given.
Mollohan initially agreed to make those records public for this article but later informed Roll Call that the foundation officials declined to comply with his request.
On April 14, 2003, Mollohan’s office issued a press release announcing that IMC had opened a branch on the “I-79 Technology Corridor.” The press release said IMC “provides government and commercial clients with document and data conversion, managed data storage and application services” and does work for “more than a dozen federal agencies.” MZM also does work in the data digitization field.
The financial connections between Mollohan and IMC mirror others that have flourished between the West Virginian and federal contractors in his home state. Mollohan has received significant campaign contributions from other companies that won contracts based on earmarks he has helped secure, although he said that he plays no role in helping a company win a government contract beyond making sure a program is funded.
Mollohan said he has never intervened with a department or agency about to whom it will award a contract. “That’s the ‘P’ word — procurement,” he said. “That I don’t get involved in at all. Zero, nothing, with anybody or anyplace. A company that is doing business in our district, I’m like every other Member of Congress — I’m supportive of their program. But I am not involved in getting their [contract]. That’s their own problem.” Mollohan, like both his mentor Byrd and another close political ally on the Appropriations Committee, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), goes to great lengths to steer federal dollars back home. The companies that win those contracts help form a financial network that effectively underwrites the cost of Mollohan’s political campaigns. For instance, TMC Technologies of Fairmont, W.Va., has secured more than $10 million in federal contracts since October 2001, and company officials openly thanked Mollohan in press releases for inserting earmarks into spending bills on their behalf.
In 2003, TMC was awarded a $2 million contract from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration thanks to an earmark from Mollohan. In 2004, TMC got another $5 million NOAA contract, again via a Mollohan earmark. TMC and its employees have been generous donors to Mollohan. TMC gave $5,000 in soft money to Summit PAC in 2002, and TMC employees have given $21,000 to Summit PAC in hard money since 2003. TMC employees also have donated more than $20,000 to Mollohan’s re-election campaign since 1998. Mollohan invited representatives from TMC to attend a trade mission to Spain in July 2004.
In 2002, TMC was a sponsor of the Mollohan Foundation’s golf tournament.
“They support people who are supporting them, obviously,” Mollohan said of TMC and other West Virginia firms he has helped out. “You can just spin this any way you want. ... The operative relationship is that these companies benefit the Member’s district.”
Mollohan rejected any suggestion that this arrangement was similar to that of former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who was admonished by the ethics committee in 2004 for attending a golf tournament sponsored by a PAC he founded along with energy industry lobbyists even while serving as a conferee on a major energy reform bill.
“You just have to make that distinction yourself,” Mollohan said.
Another West Virginia company, Morgantown-based Azimuth Inc., won a $20 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security this year. Azimuth’s employees gave $21,000 to Mollohan during the 2003-04 election cycle. Azimuth provides electronics and software engineering support services.
Azimuth’s “mentor” firm, Electronic Warfare Associates, has given more than $27,000 to Mollohan’s re-election campaign and leadership PAC.
Mollohan considers it part of his job description to use his clout on Appropriations to help companies that have significant operations back home.
“All I care about is supporting companies and [federal] programs that companies are doing in my Congressional district,” Mollohan said.
hmmmm
*tsk tsk*
Doogle
Wow...the nerve to make such a fuss over Cunningham and have the chutzpah to have someone on the ETHICS COMMITTEE taking money from the same folks.
the dims have no no no dignity.
The Dems need to focus on their own party, this is laughable. What a bunch of hypocrites.
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You are joking, right? The Dems? Diclose their criminality? Fat chance. It is up to the Repubs to make it happen, and that is a whole another issue...wow, our great government at work. How our government can hammer the U.N. for its corruption is a bit hypocritical, ain't it?
Check this out
Well i suppose thats what this thread and the others like it are all about. the problem is getting it to as many eyes and ears as possible.
"Tell your friends!!"
Hypocrisy anyone?
The libs love to go after us and our contributions, but they need to look in the mirror and realize they're raising money from the same people.
A case of the fox guarding the chicken coop.
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