Did Gary Condit Give Staffers Hush Money Through Salary Increases?

rollcall.com ^

[Retired Chemist]

June 24, 2002

Condit Aides Got Big Raises

Boosts Came After Levy Allegations

By Amy Keller

House payroll records show that Rep. Gary Condit (D-Calif.) significantly increased the salaries of three key staffers in the days following the revelation that he was romantically involved with Chandra Levy, a young Washington intern who went missing last year and recently was found dead in Rock Creek Park.

A Roll Call analysis of Condit’s payroll records, as disclosed in the quarterly Statement of Disbursements of the House, revealed that the embattled Congressman gave significant pay raises to two top aides — Administrative Assistant Mike Dayton and Chief of Staff Michael Lynch — as the Levy investigation heated up.

The Congressman also awarded significant pay raises to his longtime executive secretary, Jackie Mullen, more than doubling her salary in just two years and making her one of the highest-paid secretaries in Congress by pushing her close to the $100,000 mark — a salary typically earned only by chiefs of staff in Members’ offices. Mullen works out of Condit’s district office in Modesto.

According to public records, Mullen made about $43,000 in 1999, and her annual salary for 2000 increased to about $57,000 — but thanks to tremendous leaps in pay she began receiving around the time the Levy controversy exploded, her annual salary for 2001 jumped to about $99,000. Her pay jump first appeared in payroll records covering the period from April 1, 2001 through June 30, 2001. She was paid $34,749 for those three months, whereas she only earned $16,511 during the three months prior to that.

[USNA74]

Would be interesting to see the historical raise data on the other two staffers referred to here. In other words, if their prior raises always occurred in December, then it'd look awfully suspicious if they suddenly got larger than historical raises at any other time (but especially right after the story broke).

[Pagey]

This just keeps getting more interesting by the month.

[elbucko]

We will know if Condit's guilty for certain, if he requests an IQ test instead of a polygraph test.

[dalebert]

As I recall Condit gave some pretty big bonuses to some of his staff at strange times.