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Culture of Corruption

Submitted by Tully on Mon, 06/04/2007 - 1:29pm

Jury Indicts Jefferson in Bribery Probe

Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., was indicted Monday on federal charges of racketeering, soliciting bribes and money-laundering in a long- running bribery investigation into business deals he tried to broker in Africa.
The indictment handed up in federal court in Alexandria., Va., Monday is 94 pages long and lists 16 alleged violations of federal law that could keep Jefferson in prison for up to 235 years. He is charged with racketeering, soliciting bribes, wire fraud, money-laundering, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Your own mileage.

UPDATE: The indictment is available here [pdf].

probability of innocence

Hmmm, now what's my mileage on

.................P(innocent if thousands in cash in freezer)?

0.1? 0.01? 0.001? 0.0001?

I'm surprised more dems haven't thrown this guy right under the bus, he was pretty much caught red-handed. What's the political upside to counseling patience and suggesting that justice should be left to run its course? Fine, on the criminal matters, but as to congress, why not move to boot quickly?

Why?

Because a large part of the Democratic victory was about Republican corruption and Dems wanted to bury this story and even tried at the time to make it look like the Justice Department had illegally stormed Congressional offices.

The press did little follow-up and the Democrats pretended everything could be reasonably explained.

To be fair, Hastert was also

To be fair, Hastert was also complicit in the lamentable argument that the raid was unconstitutional -- but I readily agree that Pelosi must want to punch Jefferson's lights out for the irreparable damage this is doing to the Democrats' desire to be branded as a "cleaner" Congress.

It's their own fault. They couldn't have refused to seat him, Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969), but they surely could have refused to caucus with him.

Just for the record...

The Constitution allows the House (or the Senate) to expel one of its members, with a two-thirds vote:

Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.

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