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 considerations to companies controlled by members of his family, including his brother Mose, his wife, Andrea, their five daughters and a son-in-law.

Jefferson, who represented the New Orleans-based 2nd Congressional District for nine terms, will now face sentencing by Judge T.S. Ellis III, who earlier meted out stiff sentences for lesser figures in the case. According to the U.S. attorney’s office, Jefferson faced 235 years in prison if convicted on all counts, and will still face substantial prison time.

The verdict comes four years after the Aug. 3, 2005 raids of Jefferson’s homes in New Orleans and Washington, D.C., in which the FBI found $90,000 in cash hidden in the freezer of his D.C. home, money the government said Jefferson was going to deliver as a bribe to Atiku Abubakar, then vice president of Nigeria, to gain his help with a telecommunications deal in Nigeria being pursued by Lori Mody, a Northern Virginia businesswoman.

Blagojevich — who was impeached in January for allegedly attempting to trade an appointment to President Obama’s vacated senate seat for financial favor — left office in late January, but made the rounds on the daytime television circuit for months defending his innocence.  Harris agreed to cooperate with the federal government as it builds its case against Blagojevich, who is facing 16 counts of fraud, extortion and racketeering, so we could be hearing a lot more from him in the near future.

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 from The Associated Press early Wednesday morning, Conyers is now the target of the FBI probe that lead two Synagro representatives to plead guilty this year. James Rosendall, the former Synagro Technologies vice president in Michigan and consultant Rayford Jackson have both pleaded guilty to counts of bribing the city official, now identified as Conyers.

In 2007, Monica Conyers, who is married to Congressman John Conyers Jr., was the deciding vote in the $1.2 billion contract with Synagro. She had been opposed to the contract early on but changed her vote to approve the deal.

The councilwoman has been offered a plea deal which she has yet to accept to avoid federal prosecution.

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 say accepted money for a vote to approve the $1.2 billion sewage disposal contract between Synagro and the city.

In 2007, the city council voted 5-4 to approve the contract with Texas-based Synagro. Conyers, who was initially opposed to the contract, changed her vote last minute and was the deciding vote in approving the contract. Earlier this year, Synagro’s Michigan vice president, James R. Rosendall Jr., pleaded guilty to counts of bribery connected with the contract. On Monday, Synagro consultant Rayford Jackson pleaded guilty of giving a Detroit city council member money in exchange for a favorable vote.

Conyers has insisted that she is not involved in the scandal but did not immediately refuse a plea deal Tuesday afternoon. Her lawyer has declined to comment on the plea bargain.

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 deals in Africa.

There’s plenty of intrigue here, as even the most casual observers of this saga have been curious how Jefferson intends to explain the choice of safety-deposit box that earned him the nickname “Cold Cash.” Meanwhile, The Hill yesterday briefly summarized the line of defense his lawyers plan to peddle:

The attorneys argue that the $100,000 Jefferson allegedly received in exchange for promoting donors’ business interests in the U.S. and Africa, including $90,000 found in his freezer, was not illegal because his dealings were related to private business and were not “official” in nature.

Good luck with that.

Richardson heads the State Investment Council (SIC), which manages the state’s investments. In October 2005, the SIC voted to invest $20 million with Quadrangle Group LLC, according to minutes of the meeting. At the time of the 2002 and 2006 campaign contributions, Rattner was a managing principal in the company, which he left in February of this year to take the auto-bailout job.

Though he hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing, Rattner has been identified by national media outlets as the unnamed person in federal documents who allegedly arranged in late 2004 for Quadrangle to pay $1.1 million in exchange for business with the state of New York.

While neither Quadrangle nor Rattner have been accused of any wrongdoing in New York or New Mexico, this certainly doesn’t look good for Richardson.

You can read Heath’s full story here.

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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 alleged that Stevens had failed to disclose $250,000 worth of gifts from a campaign contributor, Veco Corp., on his Senate disclosure forms. The case was straightforward: witnesses (including Stevens himself) said that Veco, an oil services firm with no background in home remodeling, had overseen an overhaul of the senator’s private residence in Girdwood, Alaska. Stevens claimed he paid all the bills Veco sent him. The jury didn’t buy it.

Stevens’ attorneys appealed the case on a number of grounds, including prosecutorial misconduct. Attorney General Eric Holder is supposedly livid at what appears to be, at least, clear-cut mismanagement by prosecutors. For example, in February, five months after Stevens’ conviction, Judge Emmett Sullivan held prosecutors in contempt when he discovered they had not handed over important information to the defense. The Justice Department replaced its legal team after the accusations surfaced.

There were other twists and turns in the trial, including allegations that an FBI agent on the case had an affair with a witness. Though an embarrassing story for the Justice Department, withholding evidence from the defense was technically worse, apparently.

NPR reports that Holder has taken into consideration Stevens’ age (he’s 85-years-old), and the fact that he’s no longer in office. We’ll be waiting for further announcements from the Justice Department.

Update: TPMMuckraker has Holder’s statement on the decision here.

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Coordination will take place from the Afghan government with General McKiernan’s staff and down throughout all levels involved in the planning and execution of operations. This especially includes the units involved. This coordination will help strengthen the  ability of the combined forces to shape and clear areas of terrorist and militant concentration and enable opportunities to assist ANP [Afghan National Police] to protect the Afghan people and key infrastructure.

It’ll be interesting to see if this works as planned. I watched a mission go pear-shaped in Paktia Province in September when Afghan police withdrew support for a U.S.-backed raid on a Taliban operative’s house after U.S. troops wouldn’t let the Afghan policemen loot the place. Getting Afghan security-force buy-in to the plans is one thing, but unless the corruption of the frontline Afghan units gets dealt with, the plans may not survive first contact with something shiny, lucrative and pocketable.

An FBI whistleblower claims that the lead FBI agent on the Stevens case, Mary Beth Kepner, was having an affair with the prosecution’s star witness, Bill Allen, who admitted under oath to giving the longest-serving Republican senator some $250,000 in gifts that Stevens never disclosed on his Senate disclosure forms.

Stevens’ case is winding through the appeals process at the moment, on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct — separate from today’s revelations. If it’s true that Stevens’ conviction hinged on a sexual relationship between an FBI agent and an oil services company CEO, well, maybe it won’t matter that President Bush passed him over in the end.

Reid explains that Stevens, 85, is a throwback from another era who didn’t get the upper-chamber’s tougher new rules that have tightened in recent years.

“It’s a different world we live in,” Reid told Politico, “and Stevens did not understand that.”

That’s pretty generous on Reid’s part. While technical rules may have changed, the underlying problem here is that Stevens allowed a local rainmaker with political interests to remodel his home at — at best — a steep discount. He also took other gifts from him, like a high-end massage chair and a new car for his daughter.

Even if Stevens didn’t know that there’s a rule about disclosing this unethical behavior, he should have certainly known the underlying behavior was unethical, if not illegal.

And by all accounts Stevens did know it was illegal. A telephone call caught on an FBI wiretap from 2006 between Stevens and Veco CEO Bill Allen captured the longest-serving Republican saying if the men were ever caught “we might have to pay a fine and serve a little time in jail.”

If there’s an argument why Stevens shouldn’t go to jail, it’s not that he was clueless.