NRCC

Getting the "Republican Congressional Medal of Distinction" a week after you agree to rehab in lieu of conviction on drug (cocaine and marijuana) charges. Damn those Republicans are a smart bunch!!!

The New York Times is now reporting on the NRCC financing scandals (see earlier posts here, here and here). Here are some highlights from the article:

Hundreds of thousands of dollars are missing and presumed stolen from the chief fund-raising arm of House Republicans, according to party officials who described the findings of emergency internal audits.

The financial records of the group, the National Republican Congressional Committee, may also have been falsified for several years, Republican officials said. The campaign committees of several Republican lawmakers may also have been victims of a scam that is now under criminal investigation by the F.B.I.

[SNIP]

But until now the committee has not acknowledged that any money was missing from its bank accounts or that the financial irregularities might extend beyond the national committee to the campaign funds of individual Republican lawmakers who also worked with Mr. Ward, a longtime party operative.

[SNIP]

Committee officials said that at least two Republican lawmakers who were clients of Mr. Ward's had reported to the committee in recent weeks that they had also found discrepancies in their campaign accounts.

If you're not up on the entire story, then give this article a read. It does a good job at explaining everything.

That needs to become the slogan of any Democrat running for congress this year. The evidence is right in the NRCC accounting scandal, which seems to be going unnoticed by the mainstream media.

There is now more evidence pointing to the NRCC's lax management that may have contributed to this scandal:

The accounting scandal now haunting the National Republican Congressional Committee was preceded by a series of decisions over the past decade to relax internal financial controls at the committee, according to numerous Republican sources familiar with the NRCC's operations during those years.

Under Virginia Rep. Tom Davis and New York Rep. Thomas Reynolds, who chaired the committee from 1999 until the end of 2006, the NRCC waived rules requiring the executive committee - made up of elected leaders and rank-and-file Republican lawmakers - to sign off on expenditures exceeding $10,000, merged the various department budgets into a single account and rolled back a prohibition on committee staff earning an income from outside companies.

Remember that this is the core of the party of "fiscal responsibility". The NRCC is the life blood for House Republicans. If they are so careless with this important money, how can they be trusted to control the money of the United States? This is a serious problem for the NRCC and can become a great campaign issue for Democrats this year.

The NRCC is suffering some serious problems, not a good thing on an election year. Not only do they have the criminal investigation into accounting practices going on and an alarming number of incumbents opting to not seek re-election, but now they have lost their communications director.

For something that started as a little blurb a couple of weeks ago, this story sure has gained momentum:

Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), a certified public accountant, had pushed for months for an internal audit of the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to GOP members, but the committee's treasurer at the time was reluctant.

Finally, at a recent meeting, the now former NRCC treasurer, Christopher J. Ward, relented, giving Conaway what was supposed to be an official internal audit from 2006. That document was a fake, the GOP members said. Even the letterhead on which it was sent was a forgery.

Revelations about the falsified document touched off an unfolding scandal that has rocked the NRCC and spurred a criminal investigation by the FBI into the committee's accounting procedures.

Read on.

Last week I posted about the investigation into possible fraud in the NRCC. Now The Politio has more. It turns out that this fraud may go back several years and a lot of high ranking Republicans are "scared" over it. Nothing like some election year drama.

That's what it kind of sounds like:

The cash-strapped National Republican Congressional Committee released a statement Friday suggesting a former vendor has engaged in fraudulent activity with regard to the committee's financial audit process.

The statement from NRCC Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) is the only information the committee is providing at this point, and the chairman emphasized that the committee has proactively contacted federal law enforcement to investigate the matter.

“As part of our ongoing efforts to institute and strengthen financial controls at the National Republican Congressional Committee, we learned earlier this week of irregularities in our financial audit process," Cole said in a statement released by the committee Friday afternoon.

Apparently a lot of Republicans are upset over this problem also, but they are more upset with the NRCC and their management problems. That has sparked the Politico to put this update at the bottom of the post:

TPM has this statement from the NRCC about one of their contributors being indicted on charges of funding terrorism:

We are extremely concerned and disturbed by these charges but we need to be careful not to rush to judgment as the judicial process moves forward. If the individual in question is actually found guilty of a crime, it is our intent to donate the money to charity.

So I guess due process comes with a price in America. Jose Padilla would have loved to gain such considerations. I am sure many other people that were rushed into the system, only to be found innocent later on, would have also loved this consideration. These are the kind of people that the Republicans have tried to remove any sort of due process on. But wait! Here we have a REPUBLICAN indicted for helping fund terrorism and it is a whole different ball game.

How about a new fundraising motto for the NRCC - "Give us money and then send the rest to al Qaeda!". That can replace last year's motto of "Send us money to protect our child predator congressmen!"

TPM has this:

Oops! Building on my last post on the NRCC's bogus Business Advisory Council and "Businessman of the Year" program, it turns out that Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari isn't the first member of the council to be indicted on charges of supporting terrorism.

Yasith Chhun, the head of the Cambodian Freedom Fighters, a group designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization, was indicted in May of 2005 for charges of plotting to overthrow the Cambodian government. He was also, The Los Angeles Times reported, a member of the NRCC's Business Advisory Council:

So let's sum up. We have people, who are big supporters of the NRCC, being arrested for financially supporting terrorism. Then we have a Republican White House, who started this war in Iraq and keeps attributing it to the "global war on terrorism". Further more, we have soldiers going over to fight in this war, then get injured and come back to the states only to be treated like shit. How many ways can you say "totally fucked up"?

Will the Democrats start serious investigations now? Pretty please!