Filing: Tape Shows Lawmaker Taking $100G

[warpedskydiver 0]

Filing: Tape Shows Lawmaker Taking $100G
Monday, May 22, 2006 3:32 AM EDT
The Associated Press
By MATTHEW BARAKAT

Listen to Audio

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Allegedly scamming a Virginia businesswoman could prove to be a major mistake for a Democratic congressman from New Orleans.

The FBI revealed Sunday that Rep. William Jefferson, under investigation for bribery, was videotaped accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from an FBI informant whose conversations with the lawmaker also were recorded. Agents later found the cash hidden in his freezer, according to a court document released Sunday.

At one meeting captured on audiotape, Jefferson chuckles about writing in code to keep secret what the government contends was his corrupt role in getting his children a cut of a communications company's deal for work in Africa.

As Jefferson and the informant passed notes about what percentage the lawmaker's family might receive, the congressman "began laughing and said, 'All these damn notes we're writing to each other as if we're talking, as if the FBI is watching,'" he told the businesswoman, who was wearing an FBI recording device.

Jefferson has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing.

As for the $100,000, the government says Jefferson got the money in a leather briefcase last July 30 at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Arlington. The plan was for the lawmaker to use the cash to bribe a high-ranking Nigerian official — the name is blacked out in the court document — to ensure the success of a business deal in that country, the affidavit said.

All but $10,000 was recovered on Aug. 3 when the FBI searched Jefferson's home in Washington. The money was stuffed in his freezer, wrapped in $10,000 packs and concealed in food containers and aluminum foil.

Two of Jefferson's associates have pleaded guilty to bribery-related charges in federal court in Alexandria. One, businessman Vernon Jackson of Louisville, Ky., admitted paying more than $400,000 in bribes to the lawmaker in exchange for his help securing business deals for Jackson's telecommunications company in Nigeria and other African countries.

The new details about the case emerged after the FBI searched Jefferson's congressional office on Capitol Hill Saturday night and Sunday. The nearly 100-page affidavit for a search warrant, made public Sunday with large portions blacked out, spells out much of the evidence so far.

The document includes excerpts of conversations between Jefferson and an unidentified business executive from northern Virginia. She agreed to wear a wire after she approached the FBI with complaints Jefferson and an associate had ripped her off in a business deal.

Jefferson's lawyer, Robert Trout, said in a statement that the prosecutors' disclosure was "part of a public relations agenda and an attempt to embarrass Congressman Jefferson. The affidavit itself is just one side of the story which has not been tested in court."

The affidavit says Jefferson is caught on videotape at the Ritz-Carlton as he takes a reddish-brown briefcase from the trunk of the informant's car, slips it into a cloth bag, puts the bag into his 1990 Lincoln Town Car and drives away.

The $100 bills in the suitcase had the same serial numbers as those found in Jefferson's freezer.

While the name of the intended recipient of the $100,000 is blacked out, other details in the affidavit indicate he is Abubakar Atiku, Nigeria's vice president. He owns a home in Potomac, Md., that authorities have searched as part of the Jefferson investigation.

The Jefferson investigation has provided some cover for Republicans who have suffered black eyes in the investigations of current and former GOP lawmakers, including Tom DeLay of Texas, the former majority leader.

Republican Randy "Duke" Cunningham of California, a Vietnam-era jetfighter ace, was sentenced in March to more than eight years in prison for accepting bribes on a scale unparalleled in the history of Congress.

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Hmmm no charges filed huh?....I guess he wasn't doing anything wrong eh?

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[TheAnvil 0]

Compare the amount of media coverage with that of the Abramoff scandal. Striking, eh?

Vinny the Anvil
Post Traumatic Didn't Make The Lakers Syndrome is REAL
JACKASS POWER!!!!!!

[warpedskydiver 0]

YEP

[idrankwhat 0]

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YEP

Have you considered that charges have not been filed yet because they don't want to formally present one (or 20 more likely) until they figure out which ones will stick?
And please don't tell me that you want to compare this to the Abramoff scandal. Hell, he's probably involved in this one too.
And damn that liberal media!!!! Where do they get off writing damaging stories about Democrats

[Andy9o8 2]

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The money was stuffed in his freezer, wrapped in $10,000 packs and concealed in food containers and aluminum foil.

Hey, you got a problem with this? Some people just like to keep thier cash on ice. Give the guy a break. Perfectly legitimate banking practice.
What you guys won't do to bash Democrats.

[Amazon 7]

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What you guys won't do to bash Democrats

DUDE.. they spend DAYS and DAYS and DAYS... searching for ANYTHING to counter the avalance of corruption from the people they themselves have sent to Washington.. to show that lookie lookie.. the Democrats do it too..sheesh.. just like gradeschool.

Personally IF someone is corrupt and have let down their constituents.. they need to be in jail.. PERIOD.

[idrankwhat 0]

WAIT!!! I FORGOT!!!!! This wasn't a bribe, it was FREE SPEECH!!!!!!

[Channman 2]

> Compare the amount of media coverage with that of the Abramoff scandal. Striking, eh?

What is stiking and somewhat of a Hijack to this thread is Ray Nagin winning re-election with only $541,000.00 to his apponents $3,300,000 plus nest egg and the DNC Chairman working to defeat him.

The DNC Black caucus I believe even asked the DNC not to get involve but to remain nuetral.

[JohnRich 4]

Damn that Republican "culture of corruption"!

[sfc 1]

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Damn that Republican "culture of corruption"!

Republicans don't have a monopoly on corruption, but they did have the opportunity to do something about it this year and did virtually nothing. I suspect if the democrats had been in charge it would have been no different. They are all a bunch of pwer hungry money grabbing selfish individuals. I wonder what it will take to turn things around in this country.:(

[warpedskydiver 0]

Jefferson Refuses to Quit Ways and Means
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 2:39 PM EDT
The Associated Press
By LAURIE KELLMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats sought to get embattled Rep. William Jefferson to resign his seat on the House's most prestigious committee.

"In the interest of upholding the high ethical standard of the House Democratic Caucus, I am writing to request your immediate resignation from the Ways and Means Committee," wrote House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi in the one-sentence correspondence.

The Louisiana Democrat was defiant.

"With respect, I decline to do so," he wrote back to Pelosi."I will not give up a committee assignment that is so vital to New Orleans at this crucial time for any uncertain, long-term political strategy."

Earlier, House Speaker Dennis Hastert demanded that the FBI surrender documents it seized and remove agents involved in the weekend raid of Jefferson's office, under what lawmakers of both parties said were unconstitutional circumstances.

"We think those materials ought to be returned," Hastert said, adding that the FBI agents involved "ought to be frozen out of that (case) just for the sake of the constitutional aspects of it."

The Saturday night search of Jefferson's office on Capitol Hill brought Democrats and Republicans together in rare election-year accord, with both parties protesting agency conduct they said violated the Constitution's separation of powers doctrine.

Support from a majority of the House would be required to strip Jefferson of his seat on the panel. It was not immediately clear whether such a vote has been planned, according to knowlegable officials of both parties who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Jefferson, meanwhile, on Wednesday filed a motion asking U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan to order the FBI to return all of the documents taken from his office during the 15-hour search. Hogan was the judge who last Thursday issued the warrant authorizing the search.

The congressman also asked that FBI and Justice Department attorneys be prohibited from reviewing the documents and that they be locked up until the judge acts on the motion.

Jefferson's motion said the search violated "speech and debate" protections in the Constitution to insure the independence of lawmakers.

Presidential administrations and the Congress have routinely subpoenaed information from each other, and often they have refuse to cede the materials sought.

This is the first time the branch seeking the information dispatched its law enforcement arm to wrest information from the office of a sitting congressman who is the target of a probe.

Republicans, meanwhile, were being careful to protest the raid without defending Jefferson, in an increasingly tense relationship with the White House over its use of executive power.

A day earlier, Hastert, R-Ill., complained personally to President Bush about raid. Other House officials have predicted that the case would bring all three branches together at the Supreme Court for a constitutional showdown.

In April, Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., personally told Bush that "the president doesn't have a blank check" during a discussion of Bush's domestic wiretapping program.

Hastert kept up the drumbeat after the FBI's raid of Jefferson's office.

"My opinion is that they took the wrong path," Hastert said after meeting with Bush in the White House. "They need to back up, and we need to go from there."

The developments are the beginning of what lawmakers predict will be a long dispute over the FBI's search of Jefferson's office last weekend. Historians say it was the first raid of a representative's quarters in Congress' 219 years.

FBI agents searched Jefferson's office in pursuit of evidence in a bribery investigation. The search warrant, signed by U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan, was based on an affidavit that said agents found $90,000 in cash wrapped and stashed in the freezer of Jefferson's home.

White House officials said they did not learn of the search until after it happened. They pledged to work with the Justice Department to soothe lawmakers.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales tried to strike a conciliatory tone, saying, "We have a great deal of respect for the Congress as a coequal branch of government." But he also defended the search: "We have an obligation to the American people to pursue the evidence where it exists."

Justice Department officials said the decision to search Jefferson's office was made in part because he refused to comply with a subpoena for documents last summer. Jefferson reported the subpoena to the House on Sept. 15, 2005.

[rushmc 23]

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Compare the amount of media coverage with that of the Abramoff scandal. Striking, eh?

And remember the media coverage when the Congressman (a republican) from CA went to prison??

Now not a peep (comparatively speaking) from any on this site or the state run media

By the way, if you all had not heard, Jefferson was sentenced to 13 years for taking bribes (among other things)

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln