corruption

From The Times-Picayune of New Orleans:
Former Democratic Congressman William Jefferson was found guilty of 11 of 16 corruption charges today by a federal jury. [...]
Jefferson was charged with soliciting bribes and other crimes for a series of schemes in which he helped American businesses broker deals in West African in exchange for payments or financial [...]

You may have thought that you had heard the last of him after his appearance on “The View,” but it looks like Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is back in the news. Today, his former chief of staff, John Harris, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, thus implicating his former boss in the pay-to-play [...]

More news from Michigan:
City Councilwoman Monica Conyers has been identified in an FBI bribery probe as “Council Member A,” the city official investigators say received more than $6,000 in cash bribes in exchange for a deciding vote that approved a $1.2 billion sewage disposal contract with the waste management company Synagro Technologies.
According to a report [...]

The Michigan Messenger’s Minehaha Forman has the details:
The FBI has offered Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers a plea deal involving her apparent connection to the Synagro Technologies sludge scandal according to published reports Tuesday afternoon. Conyers, who is married to U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., is suspected of being “Council member A,” a figure investigators [...]

Justice may be blind, but it sure ain’t quick.
Forty-six months after federal agents found $90,000 of aluminum-wrapped cash in his freezer, and thirty-seven months after FBI agents raided his office on Capitol Hill, former Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) begins trial today in Virginia on charges that he sought cash in exchange for promoting U.S. business [...]

It looks like Gov. Bill Richardson’s (D-N.M.) troubles might be getting a bit worse. Richardson is currently entangled in a federal pay-to-play investigation in his home state. Today, The New Mexico Independent’s Heath Haussamen reports that Steven Rattner, who is currently overseeing the Obama administration’s auto industry bailout program, has also been a major contributor [...]

Somewhere, Marcia Clark is pouring prosecutors on the Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) case a drink.
NPR is reporting this morning that the Justice Department plans to drop what once looked like an open-and-shut case against the case against the longest-serving Republican senator in history.
Things looked bleak for Stevens when a federal indictment dropped in July. Prosecutors [...]

I noticed last week that the Afghan Defense Minister, Ahdul Rahim Wardak, and the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, signed an accord to better integrate military planning in the war effort. It was unclear to me, though, where the cooperation would take place — way up at the ministerial/NATO [...]

Politico reports an outrageous twist to the already-absurd tale of the prosecution of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), convicted this fall on seven counts of federal bribery-related charges. This seemingly clear-cut corruption case, which was mangled from the get-go, now looks even worse.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) tells Politico that he thinks former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) — convicted on seven felony counts of failing to disclose gifts worth about $250,000 from an Alaska energy firm on his Senate disclosure forms — should not serve jail time.
Reid explains that Stevens, 85, is a throwback from [...]