“Under Secret Service investigation for sending stalker-like texts to a federal prosecutor, Democratic state Rep. Richard Steinberg on Friday abruptly resigned his Miami Beach seat.

“The events of the past week have been difficult for my family, for me and for everyone involved,” Steinberg, 39, said in a written statement. “After much consultation with my family, my friends and my colleagues in the Democratic caucus — and after some time for quiet, personal reflection — I have decided to resign, effective today, from my position as a member of Florida’s House of Representatives. ”

Steinberg’s resignation came just as the Republican Party of Florida was planning to call for his ouster. “He should have the decency to resign from office,” RPOF spokesman Brian Hughes said at the same time Steinberg was drafting his written statement.

The decision was a relief for his fellow House Democrats, who already command less than a third of their chamber and could ill-afford such a high-profile distraction, which became an Internet sensation when The Miami Herald broke the story two days ago.

Throughout the summer, Steinberg used a disguised Yahoo! account with the screen name “itsjustme24680” to send text messages to Assistant U.S. Attorney Marlene Fernandez-Karavetsos.

Over months, Fernandez-Karavetsos told investigators, the texter sent suggestive messages, calling her “sexxxy mama” and asking about her infant son. Fernandez-Karavetsos, who knew Steinberg through professional services, repeatedly asked the person to stop and identify himself.

“Considering we’re both married parents, probably best I not answer that at this point,” the texter, Steinberg, wrote back.

Fernandez-Karavetsos, 37, is married to George Karavetsos, also a federal prosecutor and chief of the Miami U.S. attorney’s narcotics section. Steinberg, 39, married his wife, Micky Ross Steinberg, in 2008. They have one child.

Finally, she complained to the U.S. Secret Service, which traced the anonymous messages back to Steinberg’s home and phone. Secret Service is only investigating the case because it involves a federal prosecutor. If any charges are brought, they would be filed in state court.”

“A Democratic fundraiser was found guilty Friday of engineering a $21 million bank fraud scheme.

Courtney Dupree was convicted of vastly overstating the billings of his Long Island City-based lighting company GDC Acquisitions in order to fraudulently obtain a loan from Amalgamated Bank.

Dupree, 42, sat stone-faced as the verdict was read in Brooklyn Federal Court. He faces up to 30 years in prison and has to pay back at least $18 million.

Dupree, who attended the elite Wharton School of Business, was a rainmaker in Democratic circles.

In 2008, Dupree hosted a $1,000-a-ticket fund-raiser for Barack Obama at his Broad St. apartment that was attended by top aide Valerie Jarrett.”

Sen. Charles Schumer’s brother-in-law was quietly nominated this month to a federal judgeship in New Jersey — a move that has some in the Garden State crying political foul, The Post has learned.

Kevin McNulty, who is married to Schumer’s sister, Fran, was named to the US District Court by the White House late on Friday, Dec. 16. According to a boilerplate quote, President Obama believes McNulty is a “distinguished individual” who “will serve the American people with integrity and a steadfast commitment to justice.”

New Jersey’s two US senators, Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, followed that up with their own news release heaping praise on the nominee.

What no one mentioned is that McNulty, 57, was the last-minute choice of Lautenberg, who had been leaning toward other candidates until surprisingly submitting McNulty’s name to the White House.

Lautenberg and his aides have given no public explanation for the decision to go with McNulty even though the latter had never been publicly touted as a contender for the job, which carries life tenure and a $174,000-a-year salary.

“No one knows why he did it,” said one person involved in the nomination process. “Everyone thinks it’s all about 2014 and Frank making sure he has Chuck in his corner.”

The White House declined to comment, as did McNulty.

Lautenberg’s reps denied any political motives and stressed that McNulty, who lives in upscale Short Hills, won the nod on the merits. He is a senior partner at Gibbons PC in Newark.

Aides also insisted that Lautenberg was clueless about McNulty’s relationship to Schumer when he first looked at him in 2009.
“It is complete fiction to suggest that there was any deal or that Kevin McNulty was brought into the process at the last minute,” said Lautenberg spokesman Caley Gray.

People involved in the judicial-nomination process in New Jersey told The Post they believe the surprise nomination was a naked political maneuver by the 87-year-old Lautenberg to stay in Schumer’s good graces. Lautenberg is worried that party elders will try to push him out of his beloved Senate seat because of his advanced age — something that Schumer, one of the party’s top opinion makers and fund-raisers, would be able to stop.

“McNulty came out of left field,” said another source involved in the Jersey judicial politics. “McNulty’s not a dumb guy, but people were just, like, ‘How’d that happen?’ ”

Schumer spokesman Mike Morey said Schumer played no part in his brother-in-law’s nod. He insisted Lautenberg could never lose Schumer’s backing.

Right.

“Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, today filed a pair of complaints concerning Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell’s use of more than $20,000 in campaign funds for personal expenses.
“Christine O’Donnell is clearly a criminal, and like any crook she should be prosecuted,” CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said in a release. “Ms. O’Donnell has spent years embezzling money from her campaign to cover her personal expenses. Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on much these days, but both sides should agree on one point: thieves belong in jail not the United States Senate.”

CREW is requesting that the U.S. Attorney’s office in Delaware open a criminal investigation and asking the Federal Election Commission to audit O’Donnell’s campaign expenses.

The group said its allegations are tied to former O’Donnell aide David Keegan’s affidavit stating O’Donnell, who has run for Senate three times, paid her rent for two months out of campaign funds in 2009 and also used campaign funds for meals and gas. In addition to misappropriation of campaign funds, CREW argues that O’Donnell is guilty of lying about the expenditures and committed tax evasion by not reporting the money as income.

Representatives for O’Donnell, whose financial disclosure form said her earned income between March 2009 and June 2010 was just $5,800, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.”

Sloan is a DNC activist running a a George Soro’s funded shadow group “CREW”, which notably files complaints on republicans only occasionally throwing one out on Democrats to appear “honest”. Here’s the background on CREW.

“CREW was founded by Democrat activists Norm Eisen (an attorney) and Louis Mayberg (a prominent Democrat donor, and co-founder of the Maryland-based mutual fund management firm ProFund Advisors LLC). CREW’s “Form 990″ IRS filing for 2001 lists Mayberg as one of its three Founding Directors; the other two are Daniel Berger (a high-profile Democrat donor who in 2004 made a $100,000 contribution to America Coming Together) and Mark Penn (a fellow at the New Politics Institute, and a top Democrat strategist and pollster who not only played a key role in Bill Clinton’s 1996 presidential campaign, but also served as head of “message and strategy” for Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign).

CREW has received financial backing from George Soros’s Open Society Institute, Democracy Alliance, the Tides Foundation, the Streisand Foundation, the Arca Foundation, the David Geffen Foundation, the Wallace Global Fund, the Mayberg Family Charitable Foundation, the Woodbury Fund, and the Sheller Family Foundation — all institutions distinguished by their support for far-left causes.

CREW’s Executive Director is Melanie Sloan, a longtime Democrat operative who previously served as Nominations Counsel for Joe Biden’s Senate Judiciary Committee (1993); Counsel for the Crime Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee for Charles Schumer (1994); Minority Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee under John Conyers (1995-1998); and Assistant U.S. District Attorney for the District of Columbia (1998-2003).

Other CREW officials have similarly deep ties to the political Left. For example, Deputy Director and Communications Director Naomi Seligman Steiner was formerly the Communications Director of Media Matters for America. CREW Special Projects Associate Lida Masoudpour was once a staffer at Media Matters and served as an intern in the office of Senator Hillary Clinton. CREW Senior Counsel Tim Mooney previously served as Senior Counsel at Alliance for Justice (AFJ). CREW Counsel Dan Roth was formerly the Dorot Judicial Selection Fellow at AFJ. CREW Research Associate Robin Powers is a former Program Associate of AFJ who interned with Vital Voices Global Partnership and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. CREW Counsel Kimberly Perkins once worked as the Assistant General Counsel for the National Office of the NAACP, where she led the “Voting Rights & Redistricting Project” and “Election Protection” efforts. CREW Executive Assistant Melissa Cuerdon, who previously worked in the pharmaceutical industry, served internships at the Sierra Club and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

On August 15, 2006, CREW took on the legal case of Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, who jointly filed a federal civil lawsuit against U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, his former Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, top Presidential advisor Karl Rove, and other then-current and former administration officials.”

Sloan is also actively supporting O’Donnell’s democrat challenger Coons.

“Given the apparent political motivations behind so many of the recent decisions at the Department of Justice (DOJ) — from the dismissal of the voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party to the re-investigation of CIA interrogators after DOJ prosecutors had already reviewed the matter and decided there was no reason for further criminal prosecution — the latest news about the dropping of the investigation against New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, Obama’s former nominee to be commerce secretary, raises a lot of questions. The Associated Press report cites a DOJ source saying that the investigation of pay-to-play allegations involving one of the governor’s largest political donors “was killed in Washington” by top DOJ officials.

For anyone familiar with internal Justice Department procedures, this is particularly suspicious. The DOJ has a manual called “Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses” (I helped edit the latest edition when I was at Justice) that sets out the rules and procedures for U.S. attorneys when they are investigating these types of public-corruption cases. It is the U.S. attorney in New Mexico who would normally make the final call on a local public-corruption case, not “top Justice Department officials” in Washington. The DOJ manual sets out the consultation rules for U.S. attorneys, who are required to “consult” with the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division in Washington. But only consultation is required; the Public Integrity Section does not make the final decision on whether an investigation should go forward. (Attorney General Eric Holder should not have forgotten this, since Public Integrity was the first place he worked at Justice.) So if the AP is correct in reporting that “top” officials in Washington killed the investigation, then political appointees within the department did not follow normal DOJ procedures.”

I am familiar with the procedures and this is the most suspicious activity I’ve ever seen from the DOJ. To take it further and more distinct the PIS doesn’t NOT make the decision to drop cases, much less “kill them”. What needs to be seen here is “who” talked to who to have these cases dropped and that would of course would be a special investigation.

Of course the Senate Judiciary Committee should at the least be looking into this, but with rabid partisans such as Leahy and Schumer and Durbin it would be an uphill climb.

Nevertheless Senator Jeff Sessions is the ranking member along with Tom Coburn, Jon Kyl, John Cornyn, Orrin Hatch, and anyone of these could recommend hearings.

It’s time they stepped up. Something is seriously wrong with Holder’s DOJ. If Democrats were serious when they went after Alberto Gonzales about “politicizing the DOJ”, then they have the opportunity to prove it wasn’t just a witch hunt.

Technorati Tags: Eric Holder, DOJ, Barack Obama, News, Politics, Corruption

“Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter has awarded some of the state’s first stimulus money to his former employer in a no-bid contract.

Ritter hired his former law firm, the Washington-based Hogan & Hartson, in a no-bid contract to review stimulus spending, The Denver Post reported Friday. It said the firm was paid $40,000 in stimulus money through June.

Aides to the governor insisted the contract was properly awarded. The state attorney general’s office deemed the contract necessary to allow the state to have speedy legal advice about stimulus money. The contract is too small to require competitive bidding.

Ritter worked for the Denver office of Hogan & Hartson in 2005, leaving the following year when he ran for governor. The law firm has about 1,300 lawyers across the country and specializes in public finance, real estate, white-collar litigation and environmental and governmental regulation.”

It may of been “properly awarded”, but why to Ritter’s ex-employer? Surely there were other law firms to choose from? Many of which I would imagine were minority owned. And he could afford to spend $40,000 in tax payer money to have lawyers to review how that $40,000 and other stimulus money was spent?

Technorati Tags: Bill Ritter, Colorado, Corruption, Democrats, News, Politics

” WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former D.C. mayor, now Washington councilman, Marion Barry has been arrested again.
Former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry was arrested July 4 and charged with stalking, police said.

Former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry was arrested July 4 and charged with stalking, police said.

On July 4, the U.S. Park Police arrested Barry and charged him with misdemeanor stalking.

About 8:45 p.m. in Anacostia Park, a Washington woman flagged down a Park Police officer on patrol and pointed to Barry, who was in another car. The woman said Barry was stalking her, Park Police spokesman Sgt. David Schlosser said.

Barry was taken into custody, processed and released, but he must make a court appearance for the charge. A court date has not been set.

Barry’s other run-ins with the law have included a federal sting operation in 1990, when he was mayor. Surveillance cameras caught him smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room.

Despite his fall from grace, he was re-elected in 1994 to a four-year term as mayor. In his latest political comeback in 2004, Barry won a seat on the D.C. Council, on which he continues to serve.”

Yeah, he serves everything except a long prison term.

Technorati Tags: Marion Barry, news, politics, democrats

“The FBI’s Sacramento division is investigating a former St. HOPE executive’s allegations of obstruction of justice, Acting U.S. Attorney Lawrence G. Brown confirmed Tuesday.

The news fuels the controversy that has followed Mayor Kevin Johnson since 2008, when his brainchild St. HOPE Academy first was investigated for misuse of public funds.

That investigation appeared to end in April when Brown’s office announced a settlement with Johnson, St. HOPE and former executive director Dana Gonzalez.

The settlement, hotly contested by the office of the inspector general for the federal Corporation for National and Community Service, required the repayment of more than $400,000 in misused grants for AmeriCorps volunteers.

However, Rick Maya, who officially left his position as executive director with St. HOPE last week, alleged in an April resignation letter that a member of the charter schools’ board deleted Johnson’s e-mails during the federal investigation. Those claims, uncovered by a public records request by The Bee, caught the interest of Brown’s office, who asked the FBI’s Sacramento division to look into it.

“The FBI has, in fact, opened an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the alleged destruction of e-mails, and is working with criminal prosecutors in this office,” Brown said in a statement to The Bee. “Beyond confirming the existence of an investigation, we are not at liberty to discuss the details of the investigation.”

What is at issue here is why the Obama administration seemed in such a hurry to silence Walpin. The nice thing about this for inquring minds is that everything related to this case is fair game under the FOIA. Non of it could have executive privilege applied. So one way or another this story is coming out.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

“Now, it looks like the White House is the one with a cognitive problem. It seems that they rushed a conclusion to the investigation without checking on the cooperation of the accused or even determining whether they had seen all of the evidence. And when the independent Inspector General tried to make that very point, the White House attacked him instead of the person who defrauded the government and may have obstructed justice on top of it.

Democrats screeched about the politicization of the Department of Justice when Bush asked for the resignations of political appointees who worked completely at his pleasure. They assumed that Bush wanted the US Attorneys out of the way for political reasons. Here we have a White House attacking an IG, authorized by both Congress and the White House and supposedly independent, for objecting to a political payoff for a high-profile Obama supporter. When do we hear that same outrage over politicization of law enforcement?”

While not a fan of a special prosecutor, there has never been a greater case for one to look at.

Technorati Tags: Gerald Walpin, Barack Obama, DOJ, Corruption

“Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill has become the first Democrat to question the White House over the firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. McCaskill, who, like Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, is a champion of inspectors general, co-wrote the 2008 legislation requiring the president to give 30 days’ notice, and cause, before firing an inspector general. In a statement released this afternoon, McCaskill says that the reason the president gave for firing Walpin — that the president no longer has “the fullest confidence” in Walpin — is, in McCaskill’s words, “not sufficient.” And McCaskill is calling on the White House to offer a fuller explanation as soon as possible. Here is McCaskill’s statement:

The White House has failed to follow the proper procedure in notifying Congress as to the removal of the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service. The legislation which was passed last year requires that the president give a reason for the removal. “Loss of confidence” is not a sufficient reason. I’m hopeful the White House will provide a more substantive rationale, in writing, as quickly as possible.”

Meanwhile there is growing call for an investigation into whether Michelle Obama had any role to play in Walpin’s firing. We can know that Walpin’s firing wasn’t “routine” or “ordinary”, and it has become evident that Walpin’s audit which found that more than $75 million dollars that was wasted on programs that do not meet criteria for funding.

Which is interesting because Obama ran on a platform to identify and eradicate such waste.

However, this from the AP gives us all we need to know.

“Obama’s move follows an investigation by Walpin finding misuse of federal grants by a nonprofit education group led by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who is an Obama supporter and former NBA basketball star. Johnson and a nonprofit education academy he founded ultimately agree to repay half of $847,000 in grants it had received from AmeriCorps.”

Byron York is on it. But the question is whether Grassley can get enough support to open a full investigation.

Technorati Tags: Gerald Walpin, Barack Obama

“The Obama administration asked Rick Wagoner, the chairman and CEO of General Motors, to step down and he agreed, a White House official said.

Wagoner’s departure is one of the remarkable strings attached to a new aid package the administration plans to offer GM.

The White House confirmed Wagoner was leaving at the government’s behest after The Associated Press reported his immediate departure, without giving a reason.

On Monday, President Obama is to unveil his plans for the auto industry, including a response to a request for additional funds by GM and Chrysler.

Industry sources had said the White House planned very tough medicine, which turned out to be an understatement. And it went to the very top. The measures to be imposed by the government will have a dramatic effect on workers, unions, suppliers, retirees and the communities where plants are located, the sources said.

GM and Chrysler have to prove their viability as a condition of a federal bailout released under former President George W. Bush, and both have asked the current administration for more money.

As a shareholder of GM I do not want the President of the United States dictating who stays or goes in a company. President Barack Obama is greatly exceeding his power as President, bordering on crimes and misdemeanors, and when it becomes clear it’s up to the people of the United States to say “Enough”.

If anyone should resign it should be Obama himself.

UPDATE: While Wagoner agreed to step down, the fact is that it under the threat of no money. Of course not extortion in the literal sense, but the move may run afoul of federal law. Under law a CEO may be removed by the board, or by resigning. The US Government has no legal right or authority to ask for the resignation of a public company.

Again while Wagoner agreed, further manipulation by the Obama Administration could provoke some serious court battles. Again as a voting shareholder I will be demanding some reaction by the board of GM against this “hostile” takeover of the company.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, Abuse of Power, Impeachment