This sure will be helpful this fall during their re-election bids:
According to The New York Times this morning, It all began to unravel when Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX), a CPA, asked to meet with the audit firm that was supposedly checking the NRCC’s books, an idea that apparently no one had had for several years. Christopher Ward, then the NRCC’s treasurer, finally relented, but then chickened out 30 minutes before and fessed up that there actually hadn’t been any audits.
It was ultimately discovered that Ward had been faking the audits since 2003. The Politico, which laid out this general outline of events early last month, reported that Ward had forged everything, including the letterhead. So when it came time to actually talk to the people who’d supposedly written those fake reports, it all unraveled.
The FBI is currently investigating, and it’s not clear yet why Ward was so keen to hide the real numbers. But as the Times reports this morning, the signs are not good. NRCC internal audits since Ward’s discovery show that “hundreds of thousands of dollars are missing and presumed stolen.” And it gets worse: there are apparently indications 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.”
I bet the donors love this shit. “Our ideas are bad and we will lose your money trying to enact them! -NRCC”
SGEW
Fixed.
cleek
this is the party of morality and accountability ?
DrDave
Absolute best line from the story in the Times:
File this one under “We should be relieved that they are not just doing it to us”
Xenos
The more sinister implication of this scandal is that it is not just a matter of donated monies being stolen or misspent, but that the NRCC may have been acting as a huge slush fund out in plain sight, taking in bribes and illegal contributions, and then laundering the monies to pour into congressional races.
This could take out a lot more than just the party leadership.
Perry Como
Free Tom Delay.
r€nato
Surely somebody’s kitchen countertops must be investigated over this.
And, of course, The New York Times is “fair game”.
r€nato
Back in 2004, I got myself on the RNC’s fundraising mailing list by donating exactly 1 penny via credit card. That very, very small donation has reaped rich rewards, as every time they send me a fundraising letter I use their postage-paid envelope to send junk mail back to them on their dime.
I think I shall print out this article and begin sending THAT to them in their envelope!
r€nato
I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that Republicans were involved in embezzlement and forging documents to cover it up.
The only thing missing here for the GOP scandal hat trick, is down-low gay sex in a bathroom stall.
Xenos
Missing? We just have not found it yet. I am sure we can tie hooker-gate back into this somehow. If we can’t we can just make it up, because now people will believe just about anything, anyway.
r€nato
That money is ‘missing’, just like all those White House/RNC emails are ‘missing’.
Bernie
Are you suprised the party that can’t manage anything in the government cannot even manage themselves?
Svensker
I’m sure there’s a Bush signing statement somewhere that makes all that stuff legal.
lutton
This Ward fellow was (or still is, I’m not sure) the campaign treasurer for Rep Vito Fossella (NY-13), a perpetual cog in the Rep. machine.
There’s a good candidate running to oust him; give him a look:
Steve Harrison for Congress
The Other Steve
This is clearly Bill Clinton’s fault.
Perry Como
No, no, no. You are missing the point. The idea is to enrich yourself and your friends. Once you understand that is the goal, everything else makes sense.
Dug Jay
Don’t you even read your own posts on your own blog? You’ve had this same material up before at least once, if not twice.
cleek
has Special Ed found a way to link this to Code Pink yet ?
tBone
I’d just like to thank cleek for his excellent version of the pie filter. Very nice work.
Jen
O/T, but I thought this WaPo quote was funny:
“I’m getting younger all the time! Really! I run backwards, like Mork!”
Cyrus
So an accountant — a Republican Congressman himself, so this didn’t exactly start off as a partisan witch-hunt — asks to double-check the Congressional Caucus’s books. The treasurer puts him off, then schedules a meeting, then reveals just before the scheduled meeting that the auditors don’t exist, the committee hasn’t been audited for years and he’s gone to great lengths to hide that fact. Congressmen don’t even want to know about what happened, just in case they might be implicated. The treasurer in question has worked for many other Republicans as well, and apparently they now refuse to say his name out loud. However, the money probably hasn’t lined his pockets personally, which raises the question of where it went.
You know how the left blogosphere sometimes callsthose who still support Republicans “dead-enders”? I think we should stop, it seems unnecessarily harsh. To the Iraqi terrorists.
L Boom
Well, several hundred thousand dollars could pay for quite a few gay prostitutes, hotel rooms, and a whole lot of crystal meth. Just saying.
Perry Como
Oh shi-. Did someone add Markov chains? Link plox.
joshua
The Republican Party is so corrupt that it steals from itself. That is… amazing.
TenguPhule
Shoot them all, then figure out what they’re guilty of later.
More and more, this seems like the best strategy to deal with the Rs.
J. Michael Neal
Has anyone checked to make sure that the money wasn’t taken to Syria?
Dennis - SGMM
I blame Nancy Pelosi.
r€nato
I think someone needs to be waterboarded to get to the bottom of this. Republicans tell me that this technique works, so let’s give it a try.
r€nato
Maybe it went to pay for Rush Limbaugh’s drug habit.
Dennis - SGMM
Cleek, I doff my hat to you.
r€nato
I think they call that, “Friday”.
cleek
nope. just canned exclamations.
Markov chains about pie… that sounds like fun. i will investigate :)
link
RSA
Like DrDave and Tenguphule, I liked this line:
Emphasis added. I can’t imagine why a large number of Republicans retiring from Congress would have anything to do with a large number of corruption cases against Republicans in Congress.
Ed Drone
Well, as someone said once, George W. wanted to be president in the worst way …
Ed
jcricket
This reminds me of what happened at Oral Roberts University. All those involved who were trying to blow the whistle/get things to operate honestly, were ignored, marginalized and pushed out. Then, of course, things blow up in a huge way and those people are proven right.
I would also like to think that events like this prove that the Libertarian (no regulation) wing of the Republican party are completely full of it, but somehow they seem impervious to logic, common sense and the real-world.
Lastly, does anyone get the sense that the Republican party of 2008 is like the mob in the late 70s, once “Omerta” started to break? Everyone who can is getting out, everyone’s turning on each other, the whole organization is in disarray. I half expect Cheney and Bush to spend the next 20 years shuffling around in a bathrobe, muttering to themselves, pretending to be crazy to avoid indictments.
Jon H
““I’m getting younger all the time! Really! I run backwards, like Mork!””
Maybe at the first debate he’ll emerge from a giant egg, like Jonathan Winters.
palmbeachmaven
According to an earlier Roll Call story, Rep. Greg Warden (Oregon) became NRCC audit committee chairman in early 2003 at the same time that Tom Reynolds became NRCC chairman.
Reynolds and Warden fire the long time treasurer, Donna M. Andersen, and replaces her with Christopher J. Ward. Ward then fires Deloitte & Touche, NRCC outside auditors.
In October 2006, the NRCC secures a $9 million loan with Wachovia Bank with forged audit reports.
BTW, Conaway, the current NRCC audit committe chairman, is a long time buddy of GWB and was, in fact, CFO of Arbusto energy. He owes his seat to Tom DeLay’s redistricting scheme.
gypsy howell
Hmmm… I’m still wondering whatever happened to the missing $8 billion in cash we “sent” to Iraq. Methinks we will start to see part of the answer.
The mother of all money-laundering schemes.
You don’t think all those assholes in Congress (I include Dems too) who consistently voted for Bush’s policies year after year after year were just doing it out of loyalty and ideology, do you?
Somewhere in the Caymans are some very hefty bank accounts….
Johnny Pez
Nitpick:
Signing statements are used to void Congressional legislation.
Executive orders are used to create Presidential legislation.
ChrisA
Oh, Please!?!
They’re not auditing because they’ve been funneling money to all sorts of shady operations. This is the party of Karl Rove afterall. If we did not have such a toxi political environment, we would have independent counsel’s and people would be going to jail for this kind of crap.
If only we had some law&order Republicans. Rembmer them? You can find them under extinct species in the political encyclopedia.
Chuck Butcher
Greg Walden, R OR 02, is my Congressman. I ran in the 06 Dem Primary to oppose him. He’s the quintessential say nothing do little Bush clone. The fact that he exercised no oversight whatever isn’t much of a surprise.