Speaker Dennis Hastert caught in new GOP scandal

[wookie294]

Denny Hastert's Late Payment

A long delay in paying for a fund-raiser at an eatery owned by scandal-plagued Jack Abramoff could prove embarrassing to a GOP Mr. Clean

Signatures restaurant, the expense-account haven owned by super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, has hosted at least 60 GOP fund-raisers since it opened on Washington's Pennsylvania Ave. NW in early 2002. But the June 3, 2003, lunchtime gathering was special: The guest of honor was House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), and the event was a relatively intimate gathering dominated by lobbyists from Greenberg Traurig, the law and lobbying firm where Abramoff then worked.

The problem? Nobody paid for the lunch -- or reported it in disclosure documents as an in-kind contribution -- as federal election law requires, BusinessWeek Online has learned. The tab -- which Hastert's office would not disclose -- was paid only this month, around the time that BusinessWeek Online began to investigate fund-raisers for Republican politicos held at Signatures. Hastert's office says his staffers uncovered the oversight.

Capitol Hill Republicans are sweating over fallout from their relationships with Abramoff. The lobbyist is under investigation by two Senate committees and a criminal task force involving the Justice Dept. and the IRS for allegedly defrauding his clients -- Indian tribes flush with casino cash -- out of millions of dollars.

http://businessweek.com/print/bwdaily/dnflash/apr2005/nf20050415_2315.htm?chan=db&

[blarbushie]

1. Inaction is Intolerable Hastert Must Restore Order

WASHINGTON -- April 14 -- Common Cause is calling on House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) to restore order in the House, where allegations regarding the conduct of the majority leader and others, combined with a gutted ethics process, have created a dark cloud over the chamber.


"Mr. Speaker, we remind you that you have significant responsibility to protect the integrity of all House members, as well as uphold the integrity of the House as an institution," Common Cause President Chellie Pingree wrote in a letter hand-delivered to Hastert's office Thursday. "By allowing the House to function with no ethics oversight, by fueling rumor and speculation with your silence and inaction, you are doing neither."


The letter notes that Speaker Hastert appears to have taken extraordinary steps in recent months to protect his embattled majority leader, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), such as forcing rule changes on a party line vote that gutted the ethics process, firing the ethics chairman for leading investigations critical of DeLay and replacing two other ethics members with party loyalists who have given money to DeLay's legal defense fund, yet may have to sit in judgment of him.


"Rep. DeLay and others may or may not be guilty of one or more of the allegations that have been raised," the letter said. "We will not know until ethics standards and a credible review process are restored in the House.


Common Cause and its nearly 300,000 members are supporters are asking Speaker Hastert to allow the House an up or down vote on the on a measure that would roll back the changes to ethics rules forced on Members at the start of the new Congress.


"This is the first step. Once that is done, the House must, in an open and bipartisan process, review and overhaul the now discredited way of enforcing ethics standards in the House," Pingree wrote.

http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0414-20.htm