Questions About 3 Republicans’ Land Deals
The House speaker cleared a cool $2 million from the sale of land near a highway project that he helped to finance with targeted federal funds. Two other GOP congressmen had similar questionable dealings in their own districts. The Washington Post has the goods.The House speaker cleared a cool $2 million from the sale of land near a highway project that he helped to finance with targeted federal funds. Two other GOP congressmen had similar questionable dealings in their own districts. The Washington Post has the goods.
WAIT, BEFORE YOU GO…Washington Post:
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) made a $2 million profit last year on the sale of land 5 1/2 miles from a highway project that he helped to finance with targeted federal funds.
A Republican House member from California, meanwhile, received nearly double what he paid for a four-acre parcel near an Air Force base after securing $8 million for a planned freeway interchange 16 miles away. And another California GOP congressman obtained funding in last year’s highway bill for street improvements near a planned residential and commercial development that he co-owns.
In all three cases, Hastert and Reps. Ken Calvert and Gary Miller say that they were securing funds their home districts wanted badly, and that in no way did the earmarks have any impact on the land values of their investments. But for watchdog groups, the cases have opened a fresh avenue for investigation and a new wrinkle in the ongoing controversy over earmarks — home-district projects funded through narrowly written legislative language.
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Washington has been rocked by the scandal of J. Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker in the history of the U.S. House.
Republicans on Capitol Hill keep telling everyone how terribly shocked they are by the tawdry tale of Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House indicted last week on charges of money-laundering in an effort to cover up alleged sexual abuse of a male high school student many years ago.
Members of the American political elite feel they are protecting the establishment by giving the former House speaker the benefit of the doubt, just as the Vatican has done for accused priests for decades.
Federal prosecutors have indicted Dennis Hastert, a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, for allegedly violating banking laws when he paid an unnamed person to conceal unspecified "past misconduct.”
Having just finished its investigation of the Mark Foley coverup, the House Ethics Committee said lawmakers behaved inappropriately, but that no rules were broken: "In all, a pattern of conduct was exhibited among many individuals to remain willfully ignorant of the potential consequences of former Representative Foley's conduct with respect to House pages."
The man who held the post of speaker longer than any Republican in history is now but one of a multitude, serving out his last days in the Congress he helped to lose. Denny Hastert's refusal to retire makes him a historical oddity, since House speakers typically end their reigns by either resigning or dying.
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