scandal

Breaking news from The Washington Post:
The dismissal of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias in December 2006 followed extensive communication among lawyers and political aides in the White House who hashed over complaints about his work on public corruption cases against Democrats, according to newly released e-mails and transcripts of closed-door House testimony by [...]

Dennis Whitfield of the American Conservative Union has sent out a press release on today’s embarrassing Mike Allen story that alleges a pay-for-play proposal between the conservative group and FedEx.

“An article containing a false headline has been published by Capitol Hill newspaper Politico today regarding an issue with expansion of the National Labor Relations Board.

Mike Allen has a dizzying scoop about the American Conservative Union:
The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s endorsement in a bitter legislative dispute, then flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.
For the $2 million+, ACU offered a range of [...]

As Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) railed away at Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, we were reminded of Coburn’s role in the recent sex scandal involving Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.).
To recap, Coburn, an obstetrician and gynecologist who lives with Ensign in Washington, has said he counseled his colleague to end an extramarital relationship with a staffer. [...]

Via The Washington Post, the office of Sen. Tom Coburn yesterday denied that the Oklahoma Republican told housemate Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) to pay millions of dollars to his former mistress to keep the affair quiet — a charge leveled by the husband of the mistress in a recent interview with the Las Vegas Sun.
“Dr. [...]

The drip, drip, drip of possible scandal keeps falling on Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.).
Gov. Mark Sanford left the Governor’s Mansion without a security escort, 38 times in 2008. In the first six months of this year, he left the mansion without security, 39 times.
Those trips are about one-third of the 195 trips Sanford made from [...]

The ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is hounding the governor even as the media spotlight (temporarily?) flits elsewhere. It’s filed a compliant with South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster and with the State Ethics Commission. Politically and legally, it’s probably not as big a worry for Sanford as the impulses [...]

Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin, is still on track to publish Gov. Mark Sanford’s (R-S.C.) book “Within Our Means.” The New York Observer checked in with publisher Adrian Zackheim and associate publisher Will Weisser.
“Adrian has checked in but we haven’t made any decisions,” Mr. Weisser said. “Obviously, there’s a lot to think about. We need [...]

The New Mexico Independent’s Trip Jennings reports that Gov. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.) is getting in on some of that sweet, sweet executive privilege action:
The [New Mexico] Independent sought to view documents from the governor’s office from January through August 2006 that would have divulged with whom he had met in the months prior to the [...]

Approaching the end of a week already dominated by judiciary events, The Associated Press is running an intriguing story announcing that Chicago-based U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is poised this afternoon to announce new public corruption charges against an unnamed elected official.
According to a statement from the U.S. attorney’s office, there are two separate criminal cases. [...]