Another Republican is implicated inthe Abramoff mess, and the FBI has raided Rep. John Doolittle’s home:
The FBI on Friday raided the Northern Virginia home consulting business owned by the wife of Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.), whose ties to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff have been under investigation for two years, sources familiar with the matter said. Agents seized computers and documents.
Doolittle’s wife, Julie, operates Sierra Dominion Financial Services Inc. out of the couple’s home in Oakton. Since 2005, a Justice Department task force has been looking into payments made by Abramoff and other lobbyists to Doolittle’s wife and the spouses of other lawmakers.
Abramoff, the once-powerful lobbyist at the center of a wide-ranging public corruption investigation, was sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison on March 29, after pleading guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials in a deal that required him to provide evidence about members of Congress.
Julie Doolittle has denied wrongdoing. “Sierra Dominion Financial Services, and its owner, Mrs. Julie Doolittle, have cooperated for years, and continue to cooperate, in the ongoing investigation of the Jack Abramoff matter,” said her lawyer, William L. Stauffer Jr.
Just your run of the mill corruption, but what makes this so awesome is his statement to the press throwing his wife under the bus:
Doolittle said in a statement: “My wife has been cooperating with the FBI and the Justice Department for almost three years and that cooperation is going to continue in the future. I support my wife 100 percent and fully expect that the truth will prevail.”
Ahh. The sanctity of marriage. Translation: “I don’t know what that crazy woman is up to, but if any laws were broken, I didn’t know about it.”
Because we all know that in most marriages, when a couple hundred thousand extra dollars show up in the bank, spouses rarely if ever discuss it. At any rate, I am sure Julie Doolittle appreciates the brave way in which here husband has stood behind her, and John Doolittle is probably the only Republican right now who thinks having everyone in the country armed is a bad idea.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
The important thing is, he says he supports her 100%.
That gets him my vote. Or would, if I replaced my brain with a boiled cauliflower and moved to his Congressional district.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Personally, I let my wife handle all the bills and the banking bullshit. If there were a couple hundred thousand dollars extra in there, I wouldn’t know about it unless my wife came home from work in a new Ferrari one day or something. So it’s easy for me to see where Rep. Doolittle is coming from, on this thing.
Jake
All the better to kick her in front of the Crosstown Express my dear…
RSA
Well, maybe 95 percent.
Rome Again
That word Dominion could be a clue to Julie’s ideology, and it doesn’t bode well.
Punchy
Mr. Cole….I’m not seeing the wife-dissing. He said she’s cooperating. Said he supports her. What am I missing? Where the nefarious undertones everyone’s reading into?
John Cole
Punchy-
They are married. Any financial gain she may have had from her misdeeds also benefitted him. While he may not be criminally liable for her behavior, he certainly benefitted, and only the truly naive would state he had no idea what she was doing.
His statements was, essentially, classic Sgt. Schultz:
‘I KNOW NOZZING!’
The phrasing of the statement is a clear distancing of himself from his intimate partner.
Crza
Punchy: to me, it simply looks like he’s doing his damndest to make this raid look like it had NOOOOOOOOOOTHING to do with him, and instead it’s only his wife who might be involved in shady bizness. That might have actually held water were he not knee-deep in the Abramhoff mess.
Andrew
You can trust someone who says this.
100%, not so much.
Rome Again
Clearly he is only intimate with her when it’s convenient for him.
Jake
Or a reference to Virginia. The alternative raises ghastly GOP/BDSM imgages and … [shudder].
Tsulagi
Pure and simple, it’s family values. Once again demonstrated here to be the vital bedrock of the Republican party. Just ask Rudy or Newt, or even Haggard now that he’s ungay.
Punchy
I’ll quibble with both the words “clear” and “intimate”. For all we know their intimacy comes from working batteries and a stack of mags….
Perhaps he’s trying to distance himself from her/their problems, but I guess I failed to see it the first time simply becuase I’d expect nothing less than such complete and utter non-responsibility for anything from a Republican.
Crust
I see that HotAir is also featuring the Doolittle Raid…
The Doolittle Raid of WWII, that is.
Jake
Update: Dolittle gave up his seat on the House Appropriations Committee.
If he could crap like the animals…
Andrew J. Lazarus
Corrected translation: Bitch set me up.
Bruce Moomaw
22 years it’s been since that oily little Mormon Uriah Heep became, first, my State Senator — which he did in the first place only through a last-day dirty political trick that got him fined $5000 after he narrowly won the election — and then my Congressman. They say the mills of the gods grind slowly; I can only hope that in this case they do grind exceedingly fine.
Bruce in Alta California
Heh.
On second thought . . .
Yaba Daba Dooooooooo !