posted April 22, 2006 02:04 PM            

Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., decided on his own to leave, at least temporarily, his party leader said Friday.

The Wall Street Journal reported April 7 that the U.S. attorney's office in Washington is examining Mollohan's personal finances and whether he properly disclosed them. The newspaper reported that Mollohan directed, or "earmarked," millions of dollars in federal funds for special projects in his home state of West Virginia as a member of the House Appropriations Committee and received campaign donations from beneficiaries of the projects.

According to a Washington Post report, Mollohan's real estate holdings and other assets jumped in value from $562,000 in 2000 to at least $6.3 million in 2004, said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center in Falls Church, Va., which filed the complaint against Mollohan.

During the same period, writes the Post, "Mollohan used his position on the House Appropriations Committee to secure more than $150 million in appropriations for five nonprofit entities that he helped establish in his congressional district. One of the groups is headed by a former appropriations aide, Laura Kurtz Kuhns, with whom Mollohan bought $2 million worth of property on Bald Head Island, N.C."

The departure by Mollohan eases a political dilemma for Democrats. Had he remained, they would have been saddled with the prospect of their top committee member under investigation as his party uses corruption as a major anti-Republican campaign theme.

The GOP immediately went on the attack anyway.**Note...About time too.

"Congressman Mollohan and the Democrats have repeatedly used the ethics committee to play politics while blocking the committee from functioning," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Mollohan will be replaced by Rep. Howard Berman of California, a former ranking Democrat on the ethics committee. The 10-member panel is the only one in the House equally divided by party.

Berman worked by consensus with committee Republicans, and vowed Friday that he wouldn't stay long if the panel couldn't break a 16-month deadlock in which each party prevented action by the other.

Democrats have demanded investigations of former Majority Leader Tom DeLay and others who were given trips, fundraisers, meals and sports skybox seats by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The Wall Street Journal reported two weeks ago that Mollohan steered millions of dollars in appropriations to nonprofit groups in his district - with much of the money going to organizations run by people who contribute to the lawmaker's campaigns.

A conservative ethics watchdog group, the National Legal and Policy Center, filed a complaint with federal prosecutors this year questioning whether Mollohan correctly reported his assets on financial disclosure forms.

Mollohan has denied any wrongdoing in the appropriations and said his financial disclosures were accurate. He attributed a large increase in assets to a boost in property values.

As late as Thursday, Mollohan was stubbornly refusing to leave. A Democratic official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name, said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi told Mollohan he needed to step down for the good of the party. "It was not anything she had to get tough about," the official said.

In a statement Friday, Pelosi, D-Calif., called the allegations "an attempt to deflect attention from the long list of Republican criminal investigations, indictments, plea agreements and resignations which have resulted from the reported long-term and extensive criminal enterprise run out of House Republican leadership offices."

Using a phrase that has become a Democratic refrain, Pelosi said, "The Republican culture of corruption has been ignored by the ethics committee for a year and a half following the decision of the Republican leadership to fire their own chairman and committee members for doing their job."

While Mollohan and committee chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash., had 16 months of friction, Berman worked well with former ethics chairman Joel Hefley, R-Colo.

Hefley sought to have his term as chairman extended at the start of 2005, but he and two other Republicans were forced off the committee after having voted to admonish DeLay, R-Texas.

posted April 22, 2006 02:18 PM            

"If Mollohan should resign from any committee, it should be the Appropriations Committee.

"Mollohan's resignation from the ethics committee is far less important than him telling the truth about his finances and amending his financial disclosure reports.

"Mollohan getting off the ethics committee does not relieve him of the responsibility of answering all the questions about his finances, including the dramatic increase in the value of the 27 condo units in a Washington, D.C., building called the Remington.

"Mollohan claims that the increase in his holdings was 'easily explained,' stating, 'It is substantially due to the surge in real estate values in recent years, particularly in the District of Columbia.'

"Here's the math: Mollohan's interest in The Remington was valued by him to be worth between $2,002 and $30,000 in the year 2000. His Financial Disclosure Report for 2004 valued the same asset at being worth $2,000,002 to $10,000,000. To give Rep. Mollohan the benefit of the doubt and calculate the lowest possible increase in value, you take the highest figure in the year 2000 range ($30,000) and the lowest possible figure in the 2004 range ($2,000,002).

"The percentage increase between those two figures is an astounding 6,566 percent. The kind of increase in value Rep. Mollohan is claiming for his Remington asset does not even remotely resemble the D.C. real estate market in recent years."

posted April 23, 2006 12:59 AM              

No indictments, here, just Republican Smear campaigns in an election year. What's new? They certainly can't run on the issues so what have they left to do but smear their opponents? It's an old and boring and tired strategy of Karl Rove's. Who incidently is about to be indicted too for corruption.