Tag: corruption

REP. LORI TRAHAN LIED ABOUT CAMPAIGN FUNDS. THE HOUSE ETHICS COMMITTEE CLEARED HER ANYWAY.

LAST DECEMBER, the independent Office of Congressional Ethics released a report concluding that there was “substantial reason” to believe that freshman Rep. Lori Trahan had broken campaign finance laws in the final days of her tight Democratic primary in Massachusetts. OCE then kicked it over to the House Ethics Committee, which is run by a bipartisan panel of Trahan’s colleagues. They’ve now concluded their own investigation, with a starkly different finding: Trahan was cleared — despite not having cooperated with the OCE investigation nor providing key documentation to support her claims.

In 2018, Trahan faced a hotly competitive primary for Massachusetts’ 3rd Congressional District, in the Boston suburbs, which she ultimately won by just 155 votes. In the final days of the campaign, Trahan had deposited $300,000 into her coffers that was classified as a personal loan, which she used to launch a TV blitz that, given the narrow margin, most likely swung the election.

By the time Trahan filed a personal financial statement, her records suggested that she did not have enough assets to have been able to make the loan to her campaign, as revealed by a Boston Globe investigation. Where, then, had the money come from?

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Secret Holds

In the odd inner workings of Congress, there’s something called a “legislative hold.” It gives any individual senator the power to stop a nominee or a bill— put a hold on them. The idea is to encourage negotiations between those for and against. But sometimes the Senator making the hold keeps his name secret. Senator Chuck Grassley tells why he’s been trying for a decade to stop the secrecy.

Sen. Grassley: So why do you put a hold on? Lot of times, people put a hold on because they want to negotiate something, or they want to use it as a lever to get something else. So I use holds, but I’ve always put a statement in the record of why I’m putting a hold on an individual nominee or a bill. So people know who it is, come and talk to Chuck Grassley and I’ll tell you what the problems is I’ve got. And you can negotiate then, whatever you want to negotiate.

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Legal Docs: St. Louis Prosecutor Tampered With Evidence In McCloskey Gun Case

The gun Patricia McCloskey waved at a mob surrounding her home last month was inoperable at the time, but the St. Louis prosecutor’s office ordered the city’s crime lab to re-assemble it into working order after confiscating the firearm, according to a local Missouri TV station reporting Wednesday.

Missouri law requires the government to prove firearms be “readily” capable of fatal harm in order to score a conviction based on the charges filed against McCloskey and her husband this week for their attempt to use legal weapons to deter rioters from their home. Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner charged Patricia and her husband Mark McCloskey each with unlawful use of a weapon, a felony that can carry up to four years in prison, for defending their $1.15 million home.

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CIA secretly owned world’s top encryption supplier, read enemy and ally messages for decades

For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret. That company was secretly run by the CIA, which had the ability to read all those communications for decades.

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