Don Young’s Legal Fees. Follow the Money.
Don Young’s second ethics investigation rolls along. The FBI investigated Alaska’s lone congressman, but in 2010 it said it didn’t have enough evidence to convict him and turned the whole thing over to the House Ethics Committee. They looked it all over, and decided to launch their own investigation in March of this year.
He allegedly improperly accepted gifts, used campaign funds for personal use, and lied to federal officials. Say it ain’t so.
So that means a whole host of new legal bills. Just this spring, Young forked over $60k from his legal defense fund to the DC law firm Akin Gump. Which is appropriate, since Don Young more often than not follows that “box of chocolates” analogy. You never know what you’re going to get.
So where does all this money come from in these days of woe and want, when dollars are tight, and regular folks are often too strapped to make political donations?
If you answered, “an oilfield services company in Louisiana that’s involved in Shell’s offshore drilling in the Arctic,” you would be correct. Edison Chouest has been kind enough to cover the Dastardly Don’s most recent tab. $60,000 was the amount Young received from Gary Chouest, after a nifty little family fundraiser the Louisiana mogul held for our congressman in Texas.
Young started the legal defense fund in 2008 after spending more than $1 million of his campaign contributions on lawyers to defend him from a corruption investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI’s investigation covered Young’s connections to the disgraced oil-field service contractor Bill Allen and his Veco Corp. It also dealt with the revelation that Young or someone from his office had changed the 2005 transportation legislation after it passed Congress to fund start-up work on a Florida interchange sought by a Young campaign contributor.
Nobody seems to be talking – not Young, not his spokesman, not the head of his legal defense fund.
But Young recently told reporters in Juneau, Alaska, that he was cooperating with the investigation and confident in the outcome. “I’ve been under a cloud all my life,” Young said then. “It’s sort of like living in Juneau. It rains on you all the time. You don’t even notice it.”
Check out the full story from Sean Cockerham HERE. And we’ll just sit tight and see how hard it rains before he notices.
“It’s sort of like living in Juneau. It rains on you all the time. You don’t even notice it.”
Well, Pffffttt! on that horsepunky Representative Young. Pffft! and double Pfffft!
It does not rain on us all the time, merely most of the time. Also too, even, and as well- we definitely notice it.
We have many, many , many names for types and gradations of types of rain. One is always paying at least half attention to the rain so as to be ready to jump when it stops or lets up some. We have houses and boats to paint, roofs to repair and replace- we have to be ready to GO!
One is always planning how many bits and pieces of waterproof outerwear to incorporate into one’s sartorial statement for the day. I could go on for a week about how much attention we pay to the rain.
Would behoove you sir, to pay attention to your lil personal cloud too. Might keep your buns outta trouble. Ya think?
Well, he can wave his oosik, spin his propellor beanie and take Pavlov’s dog back to Fort Yukon. Or jail. Whatever.
I mean Pribilof’s Dog, of course. See? Now I’m doing it!
http://oce.house.gov/disclosures/Review_No_11-3175_Referral_to_Committee.pdf
This gets confusing. According to Rep.Young (page 14/items 38-40) his office ALWAYS checks with the ethics commitee before doing fundraisers,except this time. The twelve checks all had the same domicile address and same mailing address. What a coincidence. One member of the Chouest family is listed on all 12 entities which would seem to be illegal except in the fairy tale world of U.S. politics.
All his life? At some point, maybe he should have thought there might be a problem with his behavior. People can have a few false allegations against them, but to have a cloud of allegations of unethical and illegal behavior for his whole life sounds like maybe he should get some psychiatric help.