The Republican party was on Tuesday facing a fast-growing corruption scandal with potentially serious implications for next year's elections after a well-connected Washington lobbyist pleaded guilty to bribing a congressman and other public officials.
The plea by Michael Scanlon is a breakthrough in an investigation of influence-peddling in Congress that could reach top levels of the party. It comes at a time when the Republicans are already nervous about next November's congressional elections, with support for the Iraq war falling away and the White House under the cloud of an intelligence leak investigation.
"The potential is huge," said Thomas Mann, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution. "We've never seen an example as egregious as this with these sums of money, the bilking, the cynicism and linkages ... I think you're going to see a string of indictments."
Scanlon is expected to give evidence against public officials alleged to have accepted bribes, including free golfing trips to Scotland, restaurant meals and sports tickets, in return for pushing legislation favorable to clients of Scanlon and his boss, Jack Abramoff, a Washington super-lobbyist who is also under investigation.
The congressman named in the Scanlon plea agreement is Robert Ney, a powerful Republican insider known as the "mayor of Capitol Hill" because of his influential role at the head of the House administration committee. He received a free golfing trip to Scotland, US$14,000 in campaign contributions and regular free meals at Abramoff's Washington restaurant, Signatures.
In return, court documents allege, he backed legislation and attempted to influence administration officials on the lobbyists' behalf. He is also alleged to have put his political weight behind Abramoff's attempt to buy a fleet of Florida casino ships. The man who sold it to him was killed in a mafia-style execution in 2001.
Also reported to be under investigation are half a dozen other members of Congress, including Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader who was forced to step down in September after being charged in a separate scandal over political money-laundering.
Attorneys for DeLay sought the immediate dismissal of conspiracy and money laundering charges against him on Tuesday, but a Texas judge said he would not rule for two weeks in the case.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS