Imagine that the Republican National Committee, Republican Congressional Campaign Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee were found to have received millions of dollars in contributions from convicted influence peddler Jack Abramoff and three of his closest cronies, each of whom was headed for jail onfelony convictions for fraud, racketeering and obstructing justice as part of a kickback scheme that stretched back more than two decades.
The clamor would be justifiably deafening among Democratic politicos and their friends in the mainstream media for the GOP committees to either return that dirty money or give it to charity. Just get rid of it.
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Now change the recipients to the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Committee. And change the donors to Melvyn Weiss, William Lerach, David Bershad and Steven Schulman.
These four men were indicted last year by federal prosecutors on charges of running a real-life $11.8 million kickback scheme that began in 1979 and generated more than $200 million in tainted income from an estimated 150 cases.
Weiss refuses to enter a plea bargain and faces trial on criminal charges that could send him to prison for 40 years. Lerach, Bershad and Schulman have copped pleas and will serve shorter prison terms of varying lengths. They are also paying millions of dollars in restitution.
Their alleged long-running criminal operation rewarded plaintiffs who favored their cases, thus defrauding courts, judges, defendants, corporations and the American public. Over the years, these four men gave much of their allegedly ill-gotten gain, to Democratic committees, Democratic candidates from the president to Congress, governors and state legislators, liberal advocacy groups and Democratic political action committees. Strangely enough, we’ve heard no demands for the return of those contributions.
This is especially strange because just last November Democrats regained a majority in Congress for the first time in 12 years largely on promises of ending the Republicans’ “culture of corruption.” It would seem logical then to find the three Democratic committees eager to rid themselves of money received from men who made it their business for nearly three decades to pose as defenders of the underprivileged and powerless while conspiring to steal hundreds of millions of dollars.
But that’s not what we heard when The Examiner asked the DNC about the dirty money it received from Milberg Weiss defendants in the past decade. Maybe they will return the much smaller amounts given since Howard Dean became chairman in 2005 but every dime received before that is staying in the DNC’s bank accounts.
The Examiner is still waiting to hear from the DSCC and DCCC, whose spokesmen couldn’t be bothered to return a telephone call. The criminal activities of the Milberg Weiss conspirators started in 1979, so every tainted dollar they gave to candidates and committees of both parties (GOP committees and candidates received paltry sums from the four men) should be refunded without delay.
