More on the Randy "Duke" Cunningham story

The Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery story continues to get more interesting. Josh Marshall is following it, and I am going to continue summarizing his reports on occasion. My first summary posted June 16th is found in Crooks in Congress. The followup, posted June 25th, is Summary of Stories on crooked Republican congressman Duke Cunningham . This is the next installment.

• 06-26-2005 Talking Points Memo Josh refers to the House Rule 26 which describes the gifts which Congressmen can and cannot accept. Randy "Duke" Cunninghams has crossed the line if you review the stories referenced here.
• 06-28-2005 Talking Points Memo Josh Marshall refers to the Washington Post report that the Pentagon has ordered a halt to new work for Wade Mitchell's company, MZM.
• 06-28-2005 Josh Marshall refers to the North County Time story that reports that Duke avoided about $9,000 in rent on the Yacht belonging to Mitchell Wade that he lived on.
• 06-28-2005 Josh Marshall refers to the story in the St. Petersburg Times that describes the $32,000 in campaign deductions that Katherine Harris received on a sigle day from MZM executives.
• 06-28-2005 Josh Marshall points out that MZM appears to be a company set up to troll the government for contracts. It has no apparent speciality. [Implied - the special expertise of MZM was to get government contracts, not necessarily to do any particular kind of work. The connection to Duke Cunningham and Katherine Harris becomes obvious.]
• 06-28-2005 per Josh Marshall - MZM Inc is for sale.
• 06-28-2005 Talking Points Memo MZM had hired Kay Cole James "...as the company's "senior executive vice president for national security transformation". She just resigned on Friday." She had been with MZM only a month. Previously Kay Cole James had been "...President Bush's highly-controversial Director of Office of Personnel Management." This is all described in the story by the San Diego Union Leader.
• 06-28-2005 Talking Points Memo It appears that Mitchell Wade got the first government contracts for MZM almost simultaneously with buying the Boat for Randy "Duke" Cunningham to live on. Coincidence??
• 06-28-2005 The Guardian reports that Cunningham has gotten his first subpoena for documents related to his financial activities from a federal grand jury which has opened an investigation on him.
• 06-28-2005 Talking Points Memo links to pictures of the mansion that Duke Cunningham has obtained for his services.
• 06-28-2005 Talking Points Memo reports that "Duke" Cunningham is still going to hold his golf tournament at the Belmont Country Club in Ashburn, VA.
• 06-30-2005 Talking Points Memo Apparently Representative Cunningham is selling "novelty Navy fighter pilot hero Duke Cunningham buck knives decorated with the seal of the United States Congress." It is against House rules to sell things that have the Seal of the U.S. Congress on them. Trust Duke to find one more way to break the rules to make money.
• 07-01-2005 Talking Points Memo A federal task force consisting of officials from the U.S. Attorney’s offices including members of the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service raided MZM headquarters and Rep. Cunninghams' "rented" Washington boat. The North County Times provides the details.
• 07-01-2005 Talking Points Memo reports that federal agents have also raided the home Rep. Cunningham purchased in Rancho Sante Fe. Details from the San Diego Union Leader. Investigators from the of the Department of Defense also. Do you think they may suspect some War Profiteering has been going on?
• 07-02-2005 Talking Points Memo Josh discusses the fact that the simultaneous no-nonsense criminal searches suggests that there is a danger that evidence might be destroyed. The North County Times provides details and a summary as does the Washington Post.
• 07-04-2005 North County Times Rep Cunningham cancels his July 4th activities, but not his support for the "Flag Burning" amendment. As Josh Marshall states, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."
• 07-05-2005 Talking Points MemoThe Cunningham story is given more detail, both by Josh Marshall and by the Washington Post. Rep. Cunningham's previous boat appears in the story. The previous boat, purchased for $200,000, somehow appreciated in value to $1,200,000 in five years. Cunningham sort of sold the boat to a Long Island real estate developer named Thomas T. Kontogiannis. Kontogiannis was the owner of the mortgage company that gave Cunningham the additional $million dollars he needed to buy the home in Rancho Sante Fe.
• 07-05-2005 Talking Points Memo Explains the favor that Kontogiannis was looking for. Kontogiannis was a Long Island real estate developer who had previously pled guilty in a New York public school bid-rigging and bribery case. HE was exploring what it would require for him to get a Presidential pardon. Such explorations naturally involved buying a boat from Rep. Cunningham at a price clearly above its market value.
• 07-05-2005 Talking Points Memo More on the criminal past of Thomas Kontogiannis. Kontogiannis has a habit of bribing public officials. He had also been previously arrested by the FBI for taking bribes to provide phoney U.S. Visas from a similarly crooked Athens Embassey worker. He is obviously not a person an honest Congressman would want to be associated with.
• 07-05-2005 NBC TV, San Diego Rep. Cunningham says he plans to run for relection in 2006. The investigations will just aid him in getting the allegaitons behind him before that campaign. The TV website gives a pretty good summary of the situation Duke is in.
• 07-06-2005 Talking Points Memo Josh provides a link to Swingstate Project where Bob Brigham provides an interesting chart of the Cunningham scandal.
• 07-06-2005 Talking Points Memo Josh Marshall explains why the boat Cunnignham has been living on was renamed the Duke Stir. The answer? Homophobia.
• 07-08-2005 Talking Points Memo Josh Marshall quotes several pundits all of whom think that Cunnigham's political career is toast. He then links to Molly Ivins on the subject.
• 07-09-2005 New York Times provides a story on the Cunningham - Kontioniannis connection. The Story is entitled "Firm Tied to Convict Aided Rep. Cunningham." and covers the payments from Coastal Capital, which provided $150,000 for a two-bedroom condo in Washington, D.C. (perhaps for when Duke gets seasick on the Duke Stir?) and $1,000,000 Duke used to buy the home in Rancho Sante Fe. The story was an AP report, not one reported by a New York Times reporter.
• 07-09-2005 Talking Points Memo More on the Duke's real estate ventures. Kontionainnis' mortgage company Coastal Capital also provided a mortgage for $150,000 for a two-bedroom condo in Arlington,VA. in 2002. (AP report 07-09-2005) This was part of the $350,000 it cost. Duke then resold it for $500,000 in 2004. He had purchased it from Joeseph M. Della Ratta who had removed as trustee of a retirement plan he had looted and the barred from ever again overseeing any other plans governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. He was also required to liquidate and "...distribute all remaining plan assets of the profit sharing plans of Della Ratta, Inc. and Commercial Management Company in Silver Spring, Maryland. The court further ordered restoration of more than $166,000 to the plans from assets held in a Della Ratta, Inc. corporate account and restitution to be paid by the plans’ trustees." The legal action aginst Della Ratta occurred in 2002, about the same time as the various real estate and boat transactions were occurring. Apparently real estate people in trouble with the law had a friend in Randy "Duke" Cunningham - as long as they could hand him the money, real estate and boats he wanted.

Most of this story has been reported by the San Diego Union Leader and the North County Times also of San Diego. Clearly Josh Marshall has been giving it national exposure, and the Washington Post has had a story or two. The New York Times seems to have very little interest, except when a New York convicted crook, Kontogiannis, became involved. This is a national story of Republican Congressional corruption, and the national media is ignoring it.

Clearly there will be more to come.