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You are here: Home / Politics / Four Strikes For John Solomon

Four Strikes For John Solomon

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JC asks below what exactly there is to this Harry Reid land deal story. Subcommandante Markos puts it best – absolutely nada. Actually that is not completely true. The story here is the amazing toolishness of the AP’s John Solomon when it comes to Harry Reid. Let’s recap:

* First Solomon got the simple facts wrong on Harry Reid’s involvement with Jack Abramoff and the Marianas Islands. The correct answer: there was none.

* Then Solomon breathlessly reported a gift that broke no ethics rules. There the idea was to present a story whose tone suggested a career-ending scandal but whose substance contained not a single incriminating fact. Remember that because it comes up often in Solomon’s reporting.
* Next Solomon confused tickets with credentials, again tinting a non-story in the most nefarious possible terms.
* This time Solomon cannot seem to understand the basic principles of a limited liabiilty corporation (LLC), which in Reid’s case is treated by the IRS as identical to simple ownership. As far as the relevant authorities are concerned it doesn’t exist.

So, what is the story behind the stories? Did Reid run over John Solomon’s dog? Maybe John Solomon just serves as a convenient outlet for smear merchants who know that he won’t ask too many questions. Either way you have to wonder whether the AP is best served by keeping this guy around.

***Update***

The AP is a news service and not a news retail outlet (e.g., newspaper or television news division) so they don’t care what you think. Really. If you don’t like John Solomon’s serial asshattery then look for a local periodical that ran it and let them hear about it.

Reader Interactions

58Comments

  2. 2.

    tBone

    Did Reid run over John Solomon’s dog?

    Actually, Jack Abramoff accidentally ran over Fluffy while he was dropping off some boxing match credentials tickets at Solomon’s house. Nevertheless, Reid, Nancy Pelosi, George Soros and Melanie Sloan should be immediately subponeaed and given lie detector tests to ascertain what they knew about Fluffy’s death, and when they knew it. Those leftwing fiends will stop at nothing to advance their devious agenda.

  4. 4.

    The Other Steve

    It’s sad. I think Reid should probably have reported the transaction more transparently, even if there was nothing unethical about it.

    But this John Solomon has a problem. I wrote a note to the AP telling them they should assign him to investigating Denny Hasterts dog.

  5. 5.

    Punchy

    Word on the street is that Solomon’s been taggin’ Reid in his car, carefully monitoring and soon to be publishing the sordid details on EVERY TIME Reid went 43 mph in a 40 mph zone.

    Details soon on Drudge. This could easy end Reid’s career.

  6. 6.

    DougJ

    Well, if Harry didn’t do it, then Bill Clinton certainly did. This is worse than the page scandal — at least no one died in the page scandal.

  7. 7.

    Dug Jay

    Hold on, folks. The AP story represents the least of Senator Reid’s problems when it comes to ethics, or the lack thereof. The deluge is about to start. For a small preview go check such blogs as Captain’s Quarters.

  8. 8.

    DougJ

    Thanks for the links, dug. Though you didn’t provide any.

    I was stunned to learn that Harry Reid killed Vince Foster, provided the fake memos to Dan Rather, and helped fake the data in all the bogus global warming studies.

  9. 9.

    Tim F.

    The AP story represents the least of Senator Reid’s problems when it comes to ethics

    So far the most of Senator Reid’s problems have amounted to precisely nothing. I won’t hold my breath.

  10. 10.

    Gold Star for Robot Boy

    I’ve met Solomon, and know people who’ve worked with him.
    By all accounts, he’s a showboating dick.

  11. 11.

    Paddy O'Shea

    The only people who seem to care about this Reid story are the wackaloons over on USENET. Beyond that nasty little cistern of Rove squeezins’ this specious tale is DOA.

    Anybody spend much time over there at alt.idiocy? Limbotomy central. Rather than mere Kool Aid, these special folks would seem to be receiving their psychoactive ingredients through the huffing of carpet cleaner.

  12. 12.

    Zifnab

    Don’t worry. This will give the breathless right wing punditry years of talking points to slip through the cracks of conversation. I think I heard Rush bring up every one of those previous allegations in a frenzied ejaculation of rightousness a few days ago, claiming that Reid was just a Teflon Don of the Senate and the FBI is somehow part of the liberal agenda or something…

    But Frist, Allen, Ney, DeLay, Cunningham, Foley, and the rest were… uh… setups. Damn this thing called “law”! It clearly catters only to the left-o-facists.

  13. 13.

    Tsulagi

    Looked at the story yesterday. Best I could tell Reid was “guilty” of not updating his disclosure forms with the fact the property was later held in an LLC rather than personally. Reid still continued to list the property as an asset. Plenty of everyday people, even if they just own a rental property or two, will put it in an LLC for legal and tax reasons. Big whoop.

    If this is the best the Pubs have after Foley, you gotta laugh. You know leading up to the midterms their opposition research was at speed, and after Foley, no doubt it’s gone to warp. C’mon Karl, you’re looking a little limp these days.

  14. 14.

    Andrew

    I was stunned to learn that Harry Reid killed Vince Foster

    Well, have we ever seen Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid together? Hmmm?

    Given that Vince Foster was about to expose Harry Reid’s nefarious land deals in Nevada, the most logical explanation for why Hillary had him killed is that she is Harry Reid.

  15. 15.

    ThymeZone

    C’mon Karl, you’re looking a little limp these days.

    Bingo. They are looking for anything that gains even enough traction to show up in a news cycle as “some Dem did something wrong.” They know from their machine operation that every news cycle that contains that bit of “news” is worth votes out there somewhere in a key district or among a key demo. You have to hand it to them, they have it down to a science.

    Unless there is more to this story than we’ve seen so far, which doesn’t seem likely, they drilled a dry hole on this one.

    The Hastert Prairie Parkway land deal, however …. not a dud. They’re all over it in Illinois.

  16. 16.

    Zifnab

    Unless there is more to this story than we’ve seen so far, which doesn’t seem likely, they drilled a dry hole on this one.

    hehe. Please tell me that was Bush the Younger joke you just slipped in there.

  17. 17.

    Punchy

    I’ve met Solomon, and know people who’ve worked with him.
    By all accounts, he’s a showboating dick.

    Angry bastard wanted to slice a baby in half, from what my priest said…but then again, what do Catholic priests know about young people?

  19. 19.

    tBone

    Given that Vince Foster was about to expose Harry Reid’s nefarious land deals in Nevada, the most logical explanation for why Hillary had him killed is that she is Harry Reid.

    So Hillharry is a hermaphrodite? That explains how he/she simultaneously carried on a torrid affair with Vince Foster AND dozens of random women. Not to mention both Plames. It’s all coming together . . .

  22. 22.

    ThymeZone

    Democrats have questioned a stock sale Bush made in 1990, when he sold 212,000 shares — to a mysterious, unnamed buyer who sought him out, according to a New York Times report — for $848,000.

    Bush used the money to pay off the $500,000 loan he took to buy a share of the Texas Rangers, according to the Times — a move that ended up being the best of his business career, solidifying his fortune and launching his career in politics.

    Bush reported that stock sale 34 weeks later than SEC regulations required, and he’s been unable to explain why.

    He once said the SEC lost his reporting paperwork, then spokesman Ari Fleischer recently said Harken’s lawyers lost the paperwork. Finally, in a press conference this week, Bush himself said that he wasn’t sure what had happened.

    Democrats also have questioned the ethics of a deal that took place in 1989, when Bush was on the company’s audit committee and board of directors, in which Harken executives used money borrowed from Harken to buy a Harken subsidiary and artificially boost Harken’s cash flow.

    CNN Money archives.

    No matter where you look into Bush’s past, and I mean no matter where you look, you find piles of shit like this.

    He’s an amazing, amazing story.

  23. 23.

    Jess

    Some background on Solomon:

    John Solomon, the Associated Press’s assistant bureau chief in Washington, DC, since 1999, was appointed in June 2005 to the new role of director of multimedia investigative reporting.” [1]

    “Solomon joined the AP in 1987 in Milwaukee. As news editor there, he supervised coverage of the Jeffrey Dahmer serial murders and an investigative project that revealed teachers who had molested children had been allowed to return to the classroom. In response to the investigative stories, the state of Wisconsin changed it laws to keep convicted molesters out of school for good.

    “Solomon transferred in 1991 to Washington, where he has served as a reporter, editor of the bureau’s enterprise team, news editor and assistant bureau chief. Solomon has played key roles in reporting and editing during some of the capital’s biggest stories, including the Clinton-era fund-raising and impeachment scandals and the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

    Looking over the list of articles he’s written, it looks like he’s primarily on the prowl for career-enhancing scandals more than targeting Dems specifically. Of course the two are not mutually exclusive.

  25. 25.

    jaime

    What I want to know is; Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense.

  27. 27.

    Pb

    Jess,

    Thanks, the “External Links” are especially interesting.

    First, this 2003 story:

    A month before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and all of the increased government secrecy that has ensued, the Justice Department secretly seized the home telephone records of respected investigative reporter and deputy bureau chief of the Associated Press in Washington, John Solomon. And earlier this year, the FBI opened and confiscated his mail.

    Then, all the 2005 hackery. Do they have something on him? Also note that Solomon broke the Sandy Berger national archives story, that the wingers so love to distort–and he’s responsible for starting some of those distortions as well.

    At the beginning of the news cycle on July 19, the Associated Press reported that Berger and his lawyer said that he had put handwritten notes in his jacket and pants. By referring to “pants,” rather than “pants pockets” this report fostered the impression that Berger had done something highly unusual; and by asserting that Berger and his lawyer acknowledged that this is what happened, the AP allowed the “pants” claim to be accepted as fact.

    THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed handwritten notes he had made while reading classified anti-terror documents at the archives by sticking them in his jacket and pants. [7/19]

    In fact, contrary to the AP’s suggestion that Berger acknowledged “putting documents in his … pants,” Breuer was quoted in The New York Times on July 21 saying that while Berger had put his handwritten notes in his jacket and pants pockets, “If there’s a suggestion that he’s shoving things down his pants, that is categorically false and ridiculous.” Thus, the distinction Breuer drew in the Times that had been obscured in the AP story — putting handwritten notes into pants pockets versus putting handwritten notes into pants — was all but lost.

  28. 28.

    Tsulagi

    Whine, whine, whine, TZ. And you didn’t even try to give more depth to the story as the Austin Chronicle did…

    Briefly, here’s what happened on the Ballpark deal. Bush and his partners in the Rangers convinced Arlington officials to: Pass a half-cent sales tax to pay for 70% of the stadium; use the government’s powers of eminent domain to condemn land the Rangers couldn’t or didn’t want to buy on the open market; give the Rangers control over what happens in and around the stadium; and allow the Rangers to buy the stadium (which cost $191 million to build) for just $60 million. Finally, after 12 years as the sole occupant and primary beneficiary of the stadium project, the Rangers, a privately owned business, can take title to the most expensive stadium ever built in Texas for the $60 million worth of rent and upkeep they will have already paid the city.

    Now there was honor and integrity while he was governor. Not like that low-life that didn’t update his disclosure forms with the proper name for his asset.

  29. 29.

    ThymeZone

    Thus, the distinction Breuer drew in the Times that had been obscured in the AP story—putting handwritten notes into pants pockets versus putting handwritten notes into pants—was all but lost.

    Okay, let me get this straight: He reached down into his pants with the forbidden pages?

    So that’s what this Foley-Hastert thing is about.

    Got it.

  30. 30.

    Pb

    The GOP has been trying to get their story straight for a while, but they just can’t seem to get on the same page.

  31. 31.

    Tsulagi

    Is this the best political ad ever?

    Good ad. But still, it doesn’t compare with that brilliant Albright one at Red State.

  33. 33.

    Pb

    LOL. I thought we had already established that scs actually *is* Nancy Grace, but that’s pretty good too!

  35. 35.

    Sherard

    Another exercise for you dopes:

    JC asks below what exactly there is to this Iraq Civil War story. The subcommandante at RedState.org puts it best – absolutely nada.

    Right. Kos says “nothing to see here” regarding Harry Reid and you act like that is the definitive truthiness to the story. I can’t even describe how infuriated you guys would be if the quote above were the story here instead of Kos poo-pooing Harry Reid’s coruption. Your stupidity is shocking.

  36. 36.

    Paddy O'Shea

    Sherard – So the fact that the Reid story has no legs whatsoever (outside of the usual Loon circles), for you this would mean media c-o-n-s-p-i-r-a-c-y, right?

    So what’s next? More Clinton bashing?

    Frank Rich is doing quite a job on Punkass Georgie on Oprah today. Pretty cool stuff.

  37. 37.

    peteathome

    I’m a sometimes liberal and hope teh Democrats take over this Fall ( mostly because I hate to see either party in power too long). But even given my predilection, I couldn’t figure out the big deal about the land thing. I read the whole history as presented in my local paper carefully. All I could figure out was a “possible” technical violation in not reporting the fact that the land went from being owned under Reid’s name to being owned under the LLC. Big deal, not. The LLC thing seemed very above board and with no unethical intent at all.

    I’ve got to agree. I think Reid must have run over Fluffy.

  38. 38.

    Tim F.

    I can’t even describe how infuriated you guys would be if the quote above were the story here the police towed and cubed my car for a single stupid parking ticket.

    As long we we’re playing madlibs. It would also infuriate me if a comet crashed into Stephen Colbert’s recording studio.

  39. 39.

    Punchy

    What I want to know is; Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense.

    I’m guessing easy blow jobs.

  40. 40.

    Tsulagi

    Your stupidity is shocking.

    Sherard, I could take the easy path and just say “projecting much?”, but really your punch is missing. You got to try harder. Put some steel into it. Your Republican Foley men base deserve no less.

  41. 41.

    ThymeZone

    I have found scs

    You found Michell Bachman, who speaks out about the Gay Agenda:

    The television programming is no longer strictly for entertainment and profit, it is “advocacy-driven” programming. They are mainstreaming gayness even all the way to Barney and Spongebob Squarepants. Michael Medved describes watching television as an “addiction to dysfunction” and he is right. We are witnessing a radical transformation of society right before our eyes and television is playing a huge part.

  42. 42.

    Steve

    Kos says “nothing to see here” regarding Harry Reid and you act like that is the definitive truthiness to the story.

    Uh, we actually had a pretty in-depth discussion yesterday, trying to figure out where the scandal is. We couldn’t figure it out. Nobody was like “Kos says there’s no story, so that’s the final word!”

    If you think there’s a real scandal here, just make the case. Instead what we see is a lot of fevered linking to the breathless AP story, accompanied by “Ha! Look at the libs spinning THIS!” But nobody actually explains what THIS means or why THIS is a big deal – in the echo chamber, there’s no need for substantive discussion. Some article slung mud at a Democrat and that’s all the proof required, even if no one can actually explain what the mud consists of.

    If something’s really fishy here, shouldn’t a conservative lawyer be able to explain the nature of this colossal scandal? Well, on my own initiative I took a look at Powerline:

    It looks like Brown did all the work and cut his friend Reid in on the deal. The AP report contains no evidence that there was anything crooked about the transactions themselves, although they apparently were never documented. Basically, the partners bought land that was zoned for residential use, and persuaded local authorities to change the zoning to commercial, then sold out to developers who put up a shopping center. Brown obtained the re-zoning in part by emphasizing Reid’s participation in the deal.

    Is there anything wrong with this? Not necessarily. You can make easy money by buying land on the outskirts of a fast-growing town like Las Vegas. It helps if you have the influence to get zoning changed, but, to be fair, there’s nothing wrong with re-zoning land to permit commercial development as a community grows outward.

    It does appear, though, that Reid clearly violated Senate ethics rules by failing to disclose the existence of the LLC and his partnership with Brown. He reported the income, but not the relationship. I suspect the reason for Reid’s reticence is explained by the AP’s description of his friend’s history.

    Basically, Reid lent his name and perhaps his influence to a business deal, in return for which he was cut in to the tune of $700,000. That would create a considerable obligation on Reid’s part toward his business partner–a partner he chose not to disclose, and whose name apparently keeps coming up in organized crime investigations. Is that corruption? You can decide for yourself.

    This is pretty fair, except for the last paragraph, which inaccurately states that Reid only lent his “name and influence” to the deal, when in fact he paid cold hard cash for the land, to the tune of $400,000.

    If he was supposed to disclose to the Senate that he jointly owned part of the land, though, and he didn’t, that would be wrong. People are entitled to know who your business partners are, in case you try to name a post office after them or something. But if the wackos at Powerline can’t point to anything stronger than this, then gosh, I’m not sure your cries of “libs are ignoring the HUGE Reid scandal” amount to much.

  43. 43.

    p.lukasiak

    what i want to know is where were the AP editors who were supposed to read this story before it went out over the wires?

  44. 44.

    Tsulagi

    The television programming is no longer strictly for entertainment and profit, it is “advocacy-driven” programming. They are mainstreaming gayness even all the way to Barney and Spongebob Squarepants.

    Yep, Barney and Spongebob. Osama’s got nothing on those two in terms of destruction of America and its way of life.

    How many lobes do you have to remove before that makes sense?

  45. 45.

    ThymeZone

    Osama’s got nothing on those two in terms of destruction of America and its way of life.

    Exactly.

    The institution of marriage and the Christian church are all that stand in the way of the movement’s achievement of every coveted aspiration. Those goals include universal acceptance of the gay lifestyle, the discrediting of Scriptures that condemn homosexuality, muzzling of the clergy and Christian media, granting of special privileges and rights in the law, overturning laws prohibiting pedophilia, indoctrination of children and future generations through public education, and securing all the legal benefits of marriage for any two or more people who claim to have homosexual tendencies.

    It is a perfect storm.

    These radical objectives, which seemed unthinkable just a few years ago, have largely been achieved or are now within reach. All that remains is for the movement and its friends to deliver the coup de grâce to a beleaguered institution that has held society together since earliest recorded history. Those of us in North America and Europe are not simply “slouching towards Gomorrah,” as Judge Robert Bork warned in his bestselling book7; we are hurtling toward it.

    James Dobson.

  46. 46.

    Pb

    Yeah, that Barney, destroying American values and the American family with his seditious lyrics:

    I love you

    You love me

    We’re a happy family

    That bastard.

  47. 47.

    jaime

    Some article slung mud at a Democrat and that’s all the proof required,

    Of course they live in a world where the Foley scandal is a “hoax” because Drudge paraphrased a quote from a third party and put sirens on the headline.

  48. 48.

    ThymeZone

    Yeah, that Barney, destroying American values and the American family with his seditious lyrics:

    The main knock against Barney is that he sings in the voice of Wally Balloo.

  49. 49.

    Puddle Jumper

    It’s just the AP trying to be fair and balanced. They’re have been so many Republican scandles that it just didn’t seem fair that the Democrats didn’t have any so they try to dig one up and this was the result. Stay tuned for the next scandle in which a leading Democrat Senator is found to have failed to turn the extra soda that came out of a vending machine.

  50. 50.

    Steve

    I read that Cold Fury trackback so you don’t have to.

    It’s basically just a rehash of the article in an exceedingly breathless tone, but it does include one major whammy: every year you fail to disclose something in your ethics reports counts as a new violation!

    Reid’s non-disclosure of corporate ownership thus occurred in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004.

    Oh man. What a scandal. The only question remaining is whether Nancy Pelosi and George Soros knew about this.

    And the big windup:

    Quite frankly, all these pigs are covered in slop, and it’s the height of insensate partisanship to insist that any of them smell like anything other than dung at this point.

    Right, right. Republicans are getting indicted and convicted all over the place, Karl Rove’s assistant just resigned after her name came up 162 times in a congressional report on Jack Abramoff’s influence over the White House… but the AP ran a story about Harry Reid that sure SOUNDS shady, so can’t we just call it even?

    I don’t even mind the disinformation at this point because it flows from nothing but sheer desperation, which is a lot of fun to watch.

  51. 51.

    Pb

    Stay tuned for the next scandle in which a leading Democrat Senator is found to have failed to turn the extra soda that came out of a vending machine.

    I would, but I have a feeling that we’d then soon find out that it was actually a free coupon for a soda…

  52. 52.

    r€nato

    The AP is a news service and not a news retail outlet (e.g., newspaper or television news division) so they don’t care what you think. Really. If you don’t like John Solomon’s serial asshattery then look for a local periodical that ran it and let them hear about it.

    This has been tried before. The local publication simply points their finger back at AP.

  53. 53.

    Maureen O'Donnell

    In all fairness, John Solomon is a person who has shown quite a bit of character. Don’t you think, no matter the party, Congress needs to start accepting responsibility for its actions? The mailman cannot accept gifts, and he works in the rain, and the sleet, and the snow, all hours of the day and night. Maybe it’s okay if members of congress think they might get caught and lose everything. Who among you actually trusts Congress today, and isn’t that where we all want to be? Let’s not kill the messengers. We’ll never get the messages.

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. […] And there you have it.  Also see Balloon Juice which asks: So, what is the story behind the stories? Did Reid run over John Solomon’s dog? Maybe John Solomon just serves as a convenient outlet for smear merchants who know that he won’t ask too many questions. Either way you have to wonder whether the AP is best served by keeping this guy around. […]

  3. […] Oh, nevermind. Tim F. blogging at John Cole’s place assures us that there is nothing to these scurrilous rumors of influence peddling. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Gar kein. And his readers assure us that the original AP reporter, John Solomon, is a jackhole. Anybody could have forgotten about where they put that spare $400k, er, $1.1 million worth of land. […]

  4. […] On a side note, I am sure that Abu Gonzales’s DOJ would love to spend its pre-election October doing something other than generating horrendous headlines for the GOP. A cease-and-desist order is probably out of the question (imagine those headlines) but is it even possible that no Democrats have crossed the line in the last four or five years? The idea of an independent DOJ dies sometime around January 2001 so let’s spare any nonsense about justice being blind. If Abu G could help out in any way he ceratinly would. Similarly the media is practically starving for something to fill its usual both sides are just as bad pabulum narrative. […]