Streisand pitches in as leaders write checks to defense funds (William Jefferson D-La)

Streisand pitches in as leaders write checks to defense funds
By Susan Crabtree
Posted: 02/04/08 06:38 PM [ET]

For lawmakers faced with mounting legal bills, it’s good to have friends in high places with deep pockets.

Members of the leadership on both sides of the aisle cut checks to legally embattled House colleagues, and even Barbra Streisand contributed $1,000 to Rep. Jim McDermott’s (D-Wash.) legal expense fund.

Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.), who will face trial late this month on an array of bribery and corruption charges, has collected a total of $166,550 since 2005 to help defray legal costs.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) have sent a steady stream of checks to the Louisiana Democrat, and this quarter was no different. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), a prominent CBC member, donated $5,000 through his leadership political action committee (PAC), and Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.), a former CBC chairman, cut him a check for $1,800. Weldon J. Rougeau, a past chairman of the CBC Foundation and a lawyer at Arent Fox, donated $1,000 this quarter.

Jefferson’s donations have waned, however, since he first opened his defense fund in late 2005. He collected just $7,500 the last quarter of 2007, up from late 2006 and early 2007 when no one contributed, but down from the $79,750 he raked in after the FBI searched his homes in Louisiana and Washington, D.C., in 2005.

Late last year, Jefferson reimbursed himself $8,000 from the fund and paid another $5,000 to his attorney Robert Trout.

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) gave Rep. John Doolittle $5,000 from his leadership PAC in the last quarter of 2007 even as party leaders were trying to convince the California Republican to retire so the party would have a better chance of holding onto the seat. The FBI has been investigating Doolittle and his wife’s ties to Jack Abramoff.

Boehner has pledged to hold GOP members accountable for unethical behavior and called for Jefferson’s expulsion after his indictment last June.

A Boehner spokesman explained the donation by saying only: “Doolittle was a friend dating to the early 1990s, when they worked  together as part of the Gang of Seven,” a group that took Democrats to task for their role in the House banking scandal.

Other friends and colleagues also came to Doolittle’s legal aid last quarter, including former Rep. Doug Ose (R-Calif.), who is running for his seat. Ose gave $2,000 directly and $2,000 from his family’s company, Enlow Ose & Associates.

Doolittle has collected a total of $66,250 since opening the legal fund in the middle of last year and has spent all but $15,889.

Other members who donated include: GOP Sens. Wayne Allard (Colo.), Saxby Chambliss (Ga.) and Orrin Hatch (Utah), as well as Reps. Dan Burton (Ind.), Wally Herger (Calif.), Sam Johnson (Texas), Jack Kingston (Ga.), Buck McKeon (Calif.) and Dana Rohrabacher (Calif.).

So far, McDermott is the only member enlisting real star power. McDermott reported his $1,000 donation from Streisand to his legal defense fund during the last quarter of 2007, when he amassed a total of $65,304. Rep. John Larson’s (D-Conn.) leadership PAC donated $2,500, while the lion’s share of his contributions came from constituents.

McDermott ramped up his funding after a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia made it more likely that he would have to pay a $60,000 fine and $880,000 in attorneys’ fees in a nearly decade-long battle with Boehner. At issue is an illegally taped phone call between Boehner and former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) that McDermott leaked to the media. During the same time period, McDermott had $89,920 in expenses for a variety of fundraising costs as well as $64,169 in legal fees to the Jones Day law firm.

Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.), who is also under FBI investigation for his ties to Abramoff, collected no cash during the last quarter of 2007. The fund paid $16,964 to FTI Consulting, a Baltimore firm that specializes in computer forensics such as e-mail recovery.

Nice to see that they are standing up in support of eavesdropping. Don’t you dare listen to Al-Qaeda but Republicans? Sure. They should be in jail anyway. Right Babs?

This makes my mind spin! All these thousands and thousands of dollars being exchanged between Democrat politicians and dim-witted, liberal entertainers to help criminals.

I thought these people were the bleeding heart left-wingers who worried about the homeless, poor and suffering middle class! So why aren't they contributing money to those families and sending their kids to college - paying their legal fees, medical fees, mortgages, buying them clothes and school lunches, etc.? No, they contribute to Democrat law breakers, frauds, cheats and sneaks. And then they have the audacity to tell us - we, the tax-payers - that we should be concerned about the needy and social "entitlement" programs that they feel should be funded by us, while they take all the tax-exemptions they can so their dollars don't pay for those programs. Tell me how they rationalize that their money is going to the best cause when it is not going to people who have committed no crimes, but to those who flaunt the law.

Just shows to go you.
Bob Packwood got run out of town on a rail for acting the part of a dottering OLD FOOL that should never have been put in the position of having all that young stuff around anyway. Clinton ‘does the deed’ with an intern and they basically yawned, Duke Cunningham goes to jail and gets disgraced for life and this fool from LA just keeps rolling along...At least Adam Clayton Powell was a character and DID help his constituents while lining his pockets but this new breed is something else and THE PUBLIC SUPPORTS IT?
One of my personal favorites is Alcee Hastings who after getting impeached/disbarred from the Fl Supreme Court, lands in Congress.....
In your face is one thing but...................

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