Officials: Hastert "In the Mix" of
Congressional Bribery Investigation

From the ABC News blog the Blotter courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

Federal officials say the Congressional bribery investigation now includes Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, based on information from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government.

Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with other tribes.

The other tribes were represented by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff who reportedly has provided details of his dealings with Hastert as part of his plea agreement with the government.

Click here for the rest.

Okay, this is one weird story. Of course Hastert immediately denied that he's being investigated, and a DOJ spokesman agreed with him. But then, ABC decided to stick to its story, claiming that their law-enforcement source says it doesn't matter what the DOJ is saying, Hastert is being investigated. To further complicate matters, NPR today suggested that the whole spat has something to do with the weird Congressional furor over the FBI search of alleged bribe-taker Representative William Jefferson's office in the Capitol. This is really confusing. But then, that's no surprise at all when conservatives are concerned: they don't debate these days as much as try to muddy the argument--I think they learned a lot from President Clinton's definition-of-is style of sophistry.

Anyway, what's the deal with this? Is Hastert under investigation or not? As far as I can tell, both answers are technically true. Hastert does not appear to be an official target of the overall Abramoff lobbying investigation, but he is, as ABC's source says, part of the mix. That is, they're looking at him, but haven't yet decided to go balls-to-the-walls after him yet. My bet is that he's well aware of what's going on, and is consciously parsing the official/unofficial line, and bringing in the FBI thing, all for the purpose of confusing you and me, that is, the citizens of these United States.

So, in short, Hastert is under investigation; he's simply not yet a "target." And may never be a target if nothing damning comes up. But if I was a betting man, I'd definitely put money down on Hastert being targeted. He's a DeLay loyalist, after all, and all those guys are rotten to the core.

(Thanks to the Houston Chronicle's new editorial cartoonist Nick Anderson, and the new comment feature for his cartoons, for a couple of these links.)

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