Posted on 03/07/2018 6:46:17 AM PST by MarvinStinson
Hastings's longtime girlfriend also received a promotion; has been paid maximum congressional salary for six straight years
A convicted money launderer employed by Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings (Fla.) in one of his Florida district offices received a pay increase for "part-time" work last year, new salary data filings show.
Additionally, Hastings's longtime girlfriend Patricia Williams appears to have received a promotion, though she did not get a raise since she is already receiving the maximum salary that is allowed to be paid to congressional staffers.
Dona Nichols Jones, who has been listed as working in Hastings's Palm Beach County Office for the past four years, was paid nearly $40,000 last year for "part-time" work. Nichols Jones was previously listed as an aide out of the office, but is now listed as a community liaison.
When Nichols Jones first appeared on Hastings's payroll in 2014, she was paid $15,124.97. Nichols Jones was then given $20,499.96 in 2015. In 2016, her pay rose to $29,208.32. Last year, Nichols Jones received $38,666.66 from Hastings, according to new salary data posted by Legistorm.
Nichols Jones has now been compensated $103,499.91 total for "part-time" work since first appearing on Hastings's payroll. Hastings's office did not return a request for comment on exactly what Nichols Jones's job entails or how many hours per week she works on average.
Dona Nichols Jones and her husband Mikel Jones, who worked for Rep. Hastings from 1993 to 2011 as a district administrator, were both convicted of money laundering, conspiracy, and fraud in 2011 after using hundreds of thousands of dollars from a business loan for personal use.
The FBI announced in 2011 that the Joneses schemed to defraud a lender after Mikel had taken out a business loan to help finance a Philadelphia law firm that he owned and operated. Jones had secured a multi-million dollar line of credit from Stillwater, a New York-based lender, and had agreed to only use the funds for legitimate purposes in relation to his firm.
The Joneses instead set up a shell company and created fake invoices to steer money to themselves by falsely claiming that two companies—one of which they owned—were providing services to the firm that never occurred.
The couple then used to the money to pay off credit card debt and purchase tickets to Philadelphia 76ers games.
The Joneses also laundered $160,000 through Dona and her daughter's bank account to replenish money taken from Jones's law firm trust account. Over the course of a year—from 2008 to 2009—the Joneses obtained $350,000 using fraudulent invoices.
Mikel Jones, who was convicted on 30 counts of fraud, was immediately fired from Hastings's office. Dona Nichols Jones was convicted on conspiracy, money laundering, and 14 counts of wire fraud and paid $400,000 in restitution and served one day in prison. Three years later, Hastings added Dona Nichols Jones to his district office's payroll.
In other Hastings office news, Williams, the congressman's longtime girlfriend, is now listed as his district director in his Broward County, Fla. office. Williams was listed as deputy district director of the office last year.
Williams served as co-counsel during Hastings's impeachment trial as a federal judge in the early 1980s after Hastings was charged with "conspiracy and obstruction of justice for soliciting a $150,000 bribe in return for reducing the sentences of two mob-connected felons convicted in Hastings' court."
Hastings was acquitted in 1983 before a probe later discovered that he had tampered with evidence, conspired to accept bribes, and committed perjury.
In 1989, the U.S. Senate removed Hastings from the bench, making him the first federal judge to be charged with a crime while sitting on the federal bench.
Williams, who has worked in Hastings's Broward County office since 1993, has now received the maximum congressional salary that can be paid to staffers who are not in a leadership office—$168,411—for six straight years. Hastings also employs Williams's daughter out of the office.
Following last year's Free Beacon report on Williams's earnings, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), a D.C.-based government watchdog group, filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics calling for an investigation into the payments.
FACT also named Hastings a top ethics violator of 2017 for the maxed out payments to his girlfriend.
Last year, Hastings was also reported to have used $220,000 in taxpayer funds to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit from a former staffer in his office.
In Brazil, this would be all fine, and no one would say a word.
Poontang costs money, honey.
This won’t hurt Alcee Hastings with his constituents on bit, they love it when he sticks it to the man.
It is also possible that Hastings and his marauding band may have committed other federal crimes besides possible government fraud, serial misuse of public office, confiscation of tax dollars, etc. Hastings and his gang may have engaged in other questionable activity:
<><> Title 18 U.S.C. §1341, Mail Fraud, 18 U.S.C.§1001, Presenting a False Document to an Agent of the US Government (involves several felonies and could include forgery);
<><> 18 U.S.C.§1027 False statements and concealment of facts in relation to documents required by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and other possible offenses including civil and/or criminal RICO violations.
<><> 18 U.S.C. §§1961-68 (RICO Act)18 U.S.C. §1001 (making false Statements to Agents of the US Government),
<><> 18 U.S.C. §241 (Conspiracies Against Civil Rights)
Mobilization of full investigations centering on Hastings et al’s involvement in RICO conspiracies under 18 U.S.C. §1962(c) could be warranted because (1) they are employed by or associated with a govt enterprise (2) that engaged in undermining public safety and adversely affected interstate commerce and that (3) Hastings managed the enterprise (4) through a “pattern” (5) of racketeering activity, and that (6) taxpayers and children of taxpayers were injured by reason of a “pattern” of racketeering activity.
<><> Alleged Offenses could include Violation of Title 18 U.S.C. §241 – Conspiracy Against Constitutional Rights – which prohibits in relevant part, “two or more persons (from conspiring) to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same . . .” See, 18 U.S.C. §241.
Taxpayers should demand investigations by the following agencies commence at once:
<><> FBI — Wire Fraud Division
<><> IRS-Law Enforcement Unit
<><> DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General,
<><> Dept of Commerce’s Office of Inspector General.
<><> DOJ’s Criminal Division— Public Integrity Section
<><> DOJ Criminal Division—Organized Crime Section.
<><> IRS Criminal Investigation Division
<><> Dept of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security
CONTACT: enforcement@SEC.gov
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Comment Line: 202-353-1555
Switchboard: 202-514-2000
From what I read, it sounds more like he is ‘sticking it’ to the women.
washingtonpos.com
How a congressional harassment claim led to a secret $220,000 payment
By Kimberly Kindy and Michelle Ye Hee Lee
January 14, 2018
(Black female) Winsome Packer had a plum overseas assignment, an apartment in Vienna and a six-figure salary as an adviser to a Washington congressman when it all came crashing down.
Her boss, Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.), suggested that he should stay with her when he was visiting Austria, she claimed. He made comments she considered sexually suggestive and hugged her in a way she felt inappropriate.
Hastings denies that he harassed her, and one of his attorneys claims Packer created “a fiction” with her accusations, which were made under a process Congress set up to handle sexual harassment claims against its members.
The contentious case dragged on for four years, and in the end Packer was awarded $220,000 in one of the largest secret settlements paid out in recent years by the congressional Office of Compliance.
But both sides say the process is unfair and abusive to the accuser and the accused. Packer said she has not recovered from the harrowing legal fight, and Hastings said his reputation was damaged. As lawmakers prepare to unveil bipartisan legislation as early as this week that would alter the current system for handling such claims, both Packer and Hastings said their dispute reveals a broken law that must be fixed.
Packer lost her job and is unemployed. She had to agree not to discuss her case, but she recently broke the pledge, calling it “a license to abuse and demoralize the victim completely.”
Packer: ‘Members of Congress are not induced to change their behavior’
Winsome Packer explains why she believes members of Congress accused of sexual misconduct will never change their behavior. (Video: Ashleigh Joplin/Photo: Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Hastings believes Packer should never have received a settlement, which he said he played no role in negotiating.
“The way it is being framed is I participated in something secret,” Hastings said in a recent interview. “I wasn’t in the mediation session. I wasn’t part of the settlement negotiations. I secreted nothing. We need greater transparency. I personally have no objections to releasing any and all information.”
House Employment Counsel lawyers, who represented Hastings, declined to discuss the case because of the confidentiality agreement. However, a June 12, 2014, memo from that office shows the lead attorney on the case believed the system allowed for “manufactured legal extortion.”
The attorney said Packer took a “kernel of truth” about Hastings’s sexually tinged comments but “grossly distorted events and circumstances in order to create a fiction that she experienced sexual harassment and intimidation,” the document says. For example, the attorney alluded to an incident in which Hastings told Packer he had trouble sleeping after sex, which Hastings said he shared only because he believed they were friends, not because he was pursuing her sexually.
In the end, Packer’s doggedness played an outsized role in her securing a larger-than-average settlement, documents and interviews show. She refused to settle early, pressed forward with a lawsuit and represented herself when she could no longer afford an attorney.
A flawed process
Settling sexual harassment cases on Capitol Hill is risky for members, whose careers can derail if allegations become public, and for accusers confronting a system that victims’ advocates argue protects the powerful.
The process may run up tens of thousands of dollars in private legal bills for both parties and consume months or years of staff time.
And there is no accountability for the use of taxpayer funds to settle cases. Strict confidentiality required under the law keeps secret the names of members and terms of settlement agreements.
Congress is now considering amending the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act, the law governing how harassment cases are handled on Capitol Hill, after seven members have either resigned or said they would not seek reelection in the wake of sexual harassment allegations. Attorneys who handle these cases say most staffers take no action because they fear it could hurt their careers.
The claim Packer brought against Hastings in 2010 illustrates flaws in the process and the bitter aftereffects it can have on both the accuser and the accused.
Hastings is a criminal felon, and he will always be a criminal felon but he thinks he can get away with it because he’s a Black Congressman and knows the media and his constituents will ignore it.
We never should have allowed representation without taxation; the Founding Fathers didn’t. Democratic politics is simply the art of transferring the wealth of Republicans to Democrats, nothing more. People are paid for government jobs and for not working - and both vote the straight “D” line.
“Hot Dog” Tommy Robinson was a republican. Jerry Jones’ daughter was on his payroll and Robinson said he didn’t know what her duties were. He was a republican. More Dems do it. But the repubs enable it.
It’s Broward county folks...
I’m sure both parties do it, but I’m sure it is more widely done by urban Dems - simply because their constituents don’t care: It isn’t their money anyway. Who would complain? Why?
So, he was sticking it to women and having US pay for it ?
That’s about the size of it (smirk)......
the true hard facts.
Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings (Fla.)
A real piece of crap.
Impeached as a federal judge for taking bribes in connection with drug busts.
STill his hood feels it necessary to elect and re-elect this ass clown criminal.
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