Craig's campaign funds his lawyers

[Ghost in the Machine]

Craig's campaign funds his lawyers
Published: 10/23/07, 6:30 PM EDT
By Erika Bolstad

WASHINGTON _ Sen. Larry Craig tapped nearly $23,000 of his campaign account to pay lawyers who've been advising him since news broke he was arrested in a sex sting, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.

Over the past three months, Craig spent nearly $23,000 with Stan Brand, the Washington D.C. lawyer who is helping Craig defend a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee.

There's no bill yet from Washington D.C. criminal lawyer Billy Martin or public relations expert Judy Smith. Martin was hired to work on overturning Craig's guilty plea to charges stemming from his June 11 arrest in a sex sting in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Craig, who has said he has no plans to run for reelection, has $474,666 in his campaign account, according to his FEC report.

FEC rules on tapping campaign contributions to pay legal bills are fairly broad. The money can't be used for personal expenses, but generally, the only requirement is that the spending be related to legal bills connected to an officeholder's role as an elected official.

http://www.att.net/s/editorial.dll?bfromind=7816&eeid=5483249&_sitecat=1183&dcatid=0&eetype=article&render=y&ac=-2&ck=&ch=ne

[Olney Blue]

1. This has got to be illegal. WTF?

[Ghost in the Machine]

2. Lawmakers Pony Up for Legal Bills

Lawmakers Pony Up for Legal Bills
Susan Davis reports on Congress.

Rep. Don Young, a senior Republican lawmaker from Alaska, spent $178,000 on legal bills in the third quarter of the year, according to disclosure reports filed Monday. Washington Wire has not reviewed all 465 reports from House members, but Young’s bill so far appears to be the highest paid by any member of the chamber.

Young is under federal investigation in a broad public corruption probe enveloping a number of prominent Alaskan officials, including Sen. Ted Stevens. The Wall Street Journal’s John Wilke reported on the probe earlier this year. Young’s latest payment brings his total legal bills for the year to $472,000, all paid out of his campaign account.


Stevens
Former Republican Rep. Mark Foley, who resigned his Florida seat in September 2006 after it came to light that he had sent inappropriate Internet messages to teenage males from the House Page program, is still paying legal bills one year after the scandal despite never being charged with a crime. Foley’s latest disclosure reports show a $151,000 payment to Zuckerman Spaeder law firm. Foley has used his campaign account to pay a whopping $682,000 in legal bills in the past year, leaving the account with $1.3 million.

Other lawmakers under federal investigation include Rep. Jerry Lewis (R., Calif.), the senior Republican on the Appropriation Committee, who paid $17,000 to Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D., W.Va.), who paid $55,000 to Kellogg Huber Hansen Todd Evan, Rep. Rick Renzi (R., Ariz.), who paid $15,000 to Steptoe & Johnson and lists a debt of $106,000 to Patton Boggs, and Rep. John Doolittle (R., Calif.), who paid $5,000 to Wiley Rein Fielding. Renzi has already announced that he will not seek re-election next year.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/10/16/lawmakers-pony-up-for-legal-bills/

[RB TexLa]

3. Pretty common

[Ghost in the Machine]

4. Lewis’ Legal Bills Soar Past $800K

Jerry Lewis (R-CA)--and he's a member in good standing--$800,000.00 in legal bills!

Lewis’ Legal Bills Soar Past $800K
By Paul Kane, Roll Call

October 31, 2006

House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) spent $820,000 in just four months to defend himself in the ongoing probe into his connections to a lobbying firm that received hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks from the Californian’s panel.

The amount spent and pace of the legal bills, from early June to mid-October and mostly from a bicoastal team of lawyers retained by Lewis from the firm of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, far exceeds the sums dished out by most other Members of the 110th Congress who have come under investigative scrutiny.

With another $52,000 paid to the firm on Oct. 11, Lewis’ total of $820,000 dwarfs the combined totals of legal bills paid out by three GOP members caught up in the ongoing Jack Abramoff probe: Sen. Conrad Burns (Mont.) and Reps. John Doolittle (Calif.) and Bob Ney (Ohio), who collectively have spent less than $600,000 on attorney’s fees defending themselves over the past year.

All told, Lewis has spent fully two-thirds of the $1.2 million raised by his campaign committee in the 2006 election cycle on legal bills related to the investigation into his relationship with ex-Rep. Bill Lowery (R-Calif.), a close friend who founded a now-defunct lobbying firm that specialized in obtaining earmarks from the Appropriations subcommittee on Defense while Lewis chaired that panel, as well as earning grants for local municipalities in and around Lewis’ district.

http://www.beyonddelay.org/node/120