This report does not look good for Harry Reid:
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn’t personally owned the property for three years, property deeds show.
In the process, Reid did not disclose to Congress an earlier sale in which he transferred his land to a company created by a friend and took a financial stake in that company, according to records and interviews.
The Nevada Democrat’s deal was engineered by Jay Brown, a longtime friend and former casino lawyer whose name surfaced in a major political bribery trial this summer and in other prior organized crime investigations. He’s never been charged with wrongdoing _ except for a 1981 federal securities complaint that was settled out of court.
I have not been following this (I remember rumblings about this months ago), so I really have nothing to offer. Although I will join Red State and the GOP when they inevitably ‘question the timing’ of this report.
Oh, wait. Reid is a Democrat. My bad.
In all seriousness, if this report demonstrates nothing else, it does just go to show that members of Congress simply don’t live like the rest of us do. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any friends cutting me in casually on million-dollar land deals. I think it is a big deal when one of my friends picks up the tab at the martini bar.
*** Update ***
The Instapundit has a reader whjo states it is nothing but a form oversight, and no tax issue, so I am assuming this is just a hit piece. It seems to have worked, as Glenn states:
“With Republicans, it’s sex. With Democrats, it’s money.”
Notwithstanding the fact that Glenn’s own reader claims it is bullshit and therefore there is NO MONEY ISSUE, I would argue the party of DeLay, Cunningham, Abramoff might want to keep corruption/money charges quiet. Kinda reminds me of this, though: