After that ruling that threw out one of the conspiracy charges against Tom DeLay, the judicial landscape hasn’t been as friendly for him.
The judge in U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay’s criminal case said today he is unlikely to allow DeLay to be tried separately from his co-defendants or on only one of the two money laundering charges still pending against him.
“It is unlikely that I will grant a severance of counts or even of defendants in the absence of a compelling reason to do so,” Senior District Judge Pat Priest said in letter to lawyers in the case.
He said he also likely will reject the request of DeLay’s attorney, Dick DeGuerin of Houston, to try DeLay only on a charge of money laundering and not on a count of conspiracy to engage in money laundering.
“The counts in the money laundering indictment … are clearly arising out of the same criminal episode (if there was one), and will involve identical evidence,” Priest said. “It would seriously violate considerations of judicial economy to try the counts separately.”
Priest said he is “fine” with holding a pretrial hearing the last week of December with a trial “early next year.”
[…]
Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has 15 days to decide whether to appeal the dismissal. DeLay’s lawyers are worried that Earle may ask for a stay to halt all proceedings until an appellate court rules.
Priest in today’s letter told DeLay’s lawyers he “cannot require the state not to appeal.”
[…]
University of Houston law professor Susan Waite Crump said the judge might not want to separate the remaining charges because it could result in two trials with the possibility of inconsistent verdicts.
DeGuerin said if DeLay wins on the money-laundering charge, he thinks prosecutors may be barred from trying him for conspiracy.
Crump said it might be easier for prosecutors to prove conspiracy than actual money laundering.
“Conspiracy doesn’t require the person who is being tried to actually do anything if one of his co-conspirators commits the crime as long as there was an agreement and intent that the crime be committed,” she said.
No separations, no way to keep Ronnie Earle from stalling him, no more dropping charges, pretty much nothing that Tom wanted he got. Karma can really bite you sometimes.
On other fronts in the Scandal-Go-Round, there’s more bad news for DeLay coming from the Marianas Island and from the SunCruz/Boulis murder case. Read about the former here and here, and the latter here and here.
Dear Ronnie Earle,
Is it possible to consider a plea bargin with Tom DeLay on the very important subject of Elections in Texas and Our Democracy? If so, Tom DeLay may be mad enough to flip on non-evidentiary E-Voting and Scanning Companies in the Great State of Texas.
Thanks for your consideration to return evidence back to elections–PAPER BALLOTS–hand counted! And if Tom DeLay does save Evidence of Our Democracy, please give him a very big break.
Thanks
Dear Ronnie Earle,
Just in case you might find the following material useful to convince Tom to Flip on non-evidentiary E-voting and Scanning Machine Companies right here in the Great State of Texas.
Thanks
Hold on to your hats people…cause here it comes…
from:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/10/114820/90
The. Biggest. Scandal. Ever! Phony Front Companies Cycle Millions Back to GOP!
by Sherlock Google
Sat Dec 10, 2005 at 10:48:20 AM CST
I hope you are sitting down when you read this. The Duke Cunningham scandal goes much deeper than just the $2.4 million in bribes being reported by the media. There is a lot the media is not telling you.
Ever wonder why the Republicans have SO much money in every national election?
And what did the Dukester do to get his Rolls-Royce, anyway? Whose Lear Jet was he flying around in? The answers to those 3 questions turn out to be The. Biggest. Scandal. Ever!
If you were a totally crooked neo-con former CIA financier Republican who hangs with the corrupt Delay-Abramoff crowd, what would be the most unethical, diabolical way to funnel SO much money to the Republican Party and neo-con schemes that you could take back the government from the Democrats?
Easy!
With your corrupt Republican buddies, form a slew of your own brand-new Defense Companies, submit bids on things the Pentagon never even asked for to the Delay/Cunningham network and Bingo!–those contributions to the GOP and K Street will flow in like never before. You can then even give to Presidential candidates like George W. Neo-Con.
Then you and your criminal gang take over the United States of America with your ill-gotten gains. Once in power, you can use your connections to weasel your way iuto intelligence agency contracts so you can help said Neo-Cons cook up a case for the Iraq War by a phony analysis of some aluminum tubes. The War on Terra is on!
Even more money for you and the GOP then.
It’s a simple plan–one even the average American can understand.
Here’s how Wilkes and Wade, with the help of the Culture of Corruption, made all of themselves wealthy with taxpayer money.
The MadCowMorningNews has learned that California Republican Congressman Randy `Duke’ Cunningham steered $500 million in defense contracts in less than a decade, according to the company’s own website, to a start-up San Diego software firm which–and here’s the beauty part–doubled as a lobbying firm.
The lobbying firm then gratefully kicked back–at a bare minimum–hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to a Jack Abramoff-directed Washington D.C. lobbying and consulting firm run by two former senior staffers of Texas Republican Tom DeLay.
It offered, in other words, one-stop shopping.
While the focus was on the $2 million in bribes paid to Cunningham after his guilty plea, the question of just what the Congressman had done for all that long green received scant media attention.
But as the extent of the damage to America’s national security wrought by the bribes which crossed Cunningham’s greasy palm begins to come into focus, the fraud being revealed is orders of magnitude greater than has been hinted at so far.
Here’s how it worked:
Money budgeted for U.S. Defense went in at the ADCS end of something called the “Wilkes Corporation” for services which the Pentagon protested it never requested, and out the other end came a magical cornucopia of bribes, kick-backs, campaign contributions, yachts, Lear jets and Rolls Royce’s.
Over the course of almost an entire decade, from 1994 to 2001, Cunningham’s Appropriations Committee repeatedly added funding to the Pentagon budget for a previously non-existent (prior to 1995) software company, ADCS, owned by the “Wilkes Corporation,” a private company (natch) owned by San Diego businessman Brent Wilkes.
The money then made a short trip–courtesy the wonders of modern accounting–from one of Brent Wilkes’ pants pocket to another, called “Group W Advisors,” which proceeded to obligingly send hundreds of thousands of dollars in `client fees’ annually to The Alexander Strategy Group, a lobbying and consulting firm currently under scrutiny in the Justice Department’s investigation of Casino Jack Abramoff.
http://www.madcowprod.com/…
Here’s Wilkes former life as a CIA financier of black bag operations to introduce him, from Cannonfire:
Much evidence supports the contention that Wilkes became a Legitimate Businessman in one of the networks outlined above: He was not of the Agency, in the sense of drawing a regular paycheck, but he became one of those “outside” businessmen who prospered by aiding the Agency, or a faction within it.
According to the San Diego Union Tribune, one of his early business ventures was very, very noteworthy:
Wilkes had moved to Washington, D.C., and opened a business named World Finance Corp. about three blocks away from the White House. One of his chief activities, sources say, was to accompany congressmen — including then-Rep. Bill Lowery of San Diego, whom Wilkes met during his participation in the SDSU Young Republicans organization – to Central America to meet with Foggo and Contra leaders.
WFC still exists: http://www.downtownaugusta.com/…
ADCS, the company Wilkes headquartered in Poway, was founded on software designed by a German firm called VPMax. I think we should see VPMax’s role in this as analogous to that of the Romanian concern which provided those wool uniforms to Saddam Hussein. As I suggested earlier, Wilkes empire is largely a collection of false fronts built on a small foundation of “real” products, usually taken from other, smaller players.
And from there, we enter the current scandal. About which, more to come soon.
Now Cannonfire on the current scandal:
Wilkes’ firms received millions of taxpayer dollars; Daniel Hopsicker puts the amount at $700 million, although mainstream journalists speak of a much lower figure. Regardless of the amount, sources agree that the Defense Department did not really like or need his document conversion services. And Wilkes’ list of companies included obvious fakes.
Defense contracts are a matter of public record. A reader named John Dean (no, not the Watergate-related John Dean) has been going through some of the records related to Wilkes — a job which ought to be done by congressional investigators. On one form, the given address does not relate to the massive Wilkes complex on Stowe Avenue in Poway. Instead, the address is 15092 Avenue of Science, San Diego CA 92128,
That, we are told, is the address of a defense firm called Mirror Labs, allegedly a leading firm in the field of testing military equipment. They are referenced in this edition of the Homeland Defense Journal. Their website, we are told, is http://www.mirrorlabs.com.
That URL goes nowhere. Google has no cache of anything ever being there.
However, this archive page reveals that they once did have a site up, from 2001 to early 2004, at which point the firm, such as it was, seems to have become defunct. The web pages speak of a company with branches in Virigina and Panama. But the only satisfied customers mentioned are a couple of small-ish private companies (real companies) who had some software beta-tested. Google presents no external evidence that a San Diego company named Mirror Labs has ever done anything related to defense, or that it had Virginia and Panama branches.
A background check on http://www.mirrorlabs.com shows that the URL address was registered by Group W Media, Wilkes’ fake ad agency. The listed administrative contact is PerfectWave Techonologies, another fake company.)
I believe that, for all practical purposes, there is no Mirror Labs, although a firm by that name may well have performed an actual service at one time. So where did the money go? When that nice fat check filled with taxpayer dollars was sent to 15092 Avenue of Science, who opened it? And what did they do with the money? Here is the organization that really has — or had — offices at that address: ADCS PAC! That’s where the money went.
Apparently, Wilkes felt queasy about housing his PAC at the same address as ADCS proper, so he set up a small office in a San Diego business park. Someone must have put down the wrong address on one of the applications.
So which candidates got chunks of that taxpayer money earmarked for “defense”?
Henry Bonilla, Roy Brown, Rick Clayburgh, Duke Cunningham (of course!), John T. Doolittle, Maria Guadalupe Garcia, George W. Gekas, Lindsay Graham, Duncan Hunter, Darrell Issa, Samuel Johnson, Thaddeus G. McCotter, Constance Morella, Devin Nune, Steve Pearce, Bill Van de Weghe Jr., Jerry Weller.
All Republicans, of course. As the scandal unfolds, the pundits will try to convince us that “both sides do it.” That simply is not true.
The donations amounted only to $5000 or so. But ADCS Pac was hardly the only mechanism by which Wilkes could distribute the Christmas candy. Remember, Perfect Wave Technologies, Pure Aqua Technologies, Group W. Advisors and other “subsidiaries” were also used as funding mechanisms.
By keeping the donations small, and by maintaining the illusion that the donors are numerous, the conspirators could line many a pocket with relative safety. Clever, eh?
Other recipients of Wilkes’ largesse: President Bush, Katherine Harris, Tom Delay, Virgil Goode Jr. and Elizabeth Dole…
And then there’s Republican Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis, who ordered continued funding of ADCS even after the DOD raised objections.
Obviously, Hunter and Lewis must go under the microscope. Even so, you’re missing the point if you waste much time castigating the above-named politicians for receiving the money. What is significant is the device itself — using “false fronts” to translate IRS-collected revenues into Republican campaign commercials.
Much evidence indicates that Wilkes is but one of many villains involved with such schemes.
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/
While I believe that the Wilkes Corporation (also known as ADCS and Group W Advisors) intended to hire enough people to give his firm a more convincing veneer of legitimacy, the available evidence indicates that Wilkes’ company existed primarily as a way-station for political pay-offs.
Remember the go-go days of the internet? Remember when a snazzy web page could make a tiny, under-financed company appear to be a massive conglomerate — even when the firm conducted little actual business?
Update that scenario to the post-9/11 era, and you have the Wilkes corporation. Apparently, they did provide the military with document services — which means, basically, that they scanned a lot of hard-copy pages that had been yellowing in file drawers. For example — and this may be the only example — ADCS worked on a project involving digitizing documents related to the building of the Panama Canal.
…
Is the Pentagon truly willing to pay three-quarters of a billion dollars to anyone who wants to run some old docs through a scanner? I know quite a few people who would volunteer to take that gig…
I still have yet to discover any evidence that the other “defense-related” enterprises operating under the Wilkes umbrella were genuine businesses. “Group W Media,” the advertising agency with no discernable clients, was a front for something — I don’t yet know what. “Group W Transportation” amounted to a time-share arrangement involving a Lear jet. “Al Dust Properties” and “Group W Holdings” supposedly owned properties — but I can’t trace any holdings beyond the impressive building which the Wilkes Corporation called home. (It’s now up for auction, by the way.) MailSafe Inc. supposedly offers “mail decontamination, digital capture, and electronic distribution to government and commercial entities.” But the web site has disappeared, and the company seems to have left zero imprint on corporate America. Where is the evidence that it actually provided any services to clients?
“PerfectWave Technologies” has (or had) what seems, at first, to be an impressive web page advertising speech recognition devices for the military. (That page is really little more than a ghost, since the official Wilkes Corp. site no longer points to it.) Look closer: The site does not specify any PerfectWave products. Neither do we encounter any named personnel or development teams. No order information. If this company makes battlefield-ready high-tech equipment, why doesn’t the the web site mention any departments, managers or employees? All we get is a single phone number and a fax number. Now conduct a Google search: Aside from channeling funds to politicians, PerfectWave hasn’t done anything to warrant a mention.
“Pure Aqua Technologies” another Wilkes operation, seems to be pure snake oil. No address, no telephone number, no nothing — except this stupid web page, which is a joke.
This from a Kossak, LieparDestin:
And thats when things start to get interesting for me. Take a look at the Group W Media site again. For an advertising firm, thats like… no substance. No nothing. Just a single phone number and a mysterious login form.
Then take a look at another site owned by Wilkes, this time a company by the name of Archer Logistics. Noting any similarities? A little substance, a smokescreen mostly. No employee names, ceo names, nothing.
On to Acoustical Communication Systems. A bit more substance to this company on first glance, but after a mere look around you’ll notice its all filler. No news, no employee names, no nothing. A Google or two will turn up that this and other companies listed, apparently never did anything of substance at all. Notice the address of 13970 Stowe Drive
Poway, CA 92064, the same as that Group W Media and ADCS.
How about Liberty Defense Tech.
AkamaiInfo Tech thanks to archive.org is a bit interesting merely for the fact that the name is so similar to that of Akamai Tech, who’s CEO was on one of the flights that crashed into the WTC.
Now my favorite so far is PerfectWave Technologies Look at that site! Fancy Smancy, at first glance you think you have something. Second glance even. But try one more time, notice the address: LOCATION
13970 Stowe Drive, Poway, CA 92064. Notice the lack ways to contact them. Lack of employee information or any media releases, etc. Google and Yahoo turn up nothing from this company except donations to the GOP. All these high-level companies, all in this 11 million dollar building , but at the same time this article says that only 100 people work at the building. But anyhow, more on PerfectWave. Political Money Line has these contributions listed:
Gelwix, Max D
5/12/2004 $1,000.00
Poway, CA 92064
Perfect Wave/Pres/CEO [Contribution]
RELY ON YOUR BELIEFS FUND
2 . Gelwix, Max D
9/26/2003 $1,000.00
Poway, CA 92064
Perfect Wave/Pres/CEO [Contribution]
FUTURE LEADERS PAC
3 . Gelwix, Max D.
6/9/2004 $2,500.00
Poway, CA 92064
Perfect Wave Technoligies/President [Contribution]
REFORM PAC
4 . Gelwix, Max D.
8/14/2003 $5,000.00
Poway, CA 92064
Perfect Wave/Pres/CEO [Contribution]
AMERICANS FOR A REPUBLICAN MAJORITY POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE
5 . GELWIX, MAX P MR.
6/26/2003 $2,000.00
POWAY, CA 92064
PERFECT WAVE/COO [Contribution]
BUSH-CHENEY ’04 (PRIMARY) INC
Try using the same site to search for ADCS, Wilkes (Brent and Regina), MZM etc.
Now I dont know if Im misinterpreting all this but to me it looks like: Wilkes and Co payoff Cunningham to get them DOD contracts. Wilkes and Co (guessing) subcontract these to whomever it is they subcontract them to, and skim a load off the top, funneling it into dummy business’s to turn around and donate it to the GOP & GOP related causes.
Oh almost forgot the oddest for last The Poway Mafia. Another site owned by Wilkes. Definately creepy.
Most of Wilkes Companies, when you go into those sites above, HAVE THE SAME ADDRESS AND EVEN HAVE THE SAME FAX NUMBER: 858-848-0400!! They are obviously fake fronts for laundering taxpayer money into GOP TV ads.
Now Mitchell Wade, from Cannonfire:
unlike Wilkes, kept the MZM Pac housed in the very same office. (We must presume that they didn’t have a great deal of office space, since unrelated tenants are in the same building.) When we look at the data on MZM Pac and its activities in 2003-2004, we learn that the population of this company has grown by leaps and bounds.
The PAC now lists roughly 100 names. A close scan of the names indicates that wives and children were recruited to the cause — the cause being, of course, donations to G.O.P. candidates. (One of the named donors is “Joe Dollar.” That can’t be real — can it?) Nearly all the donors are listed as employees of MZM Inc., and many have grandiose titles — Chairman of this, VP of that. MZM employees, we learn, were told they had to make the donations or be fired. I believe there are laws against that sort of thing.
Frankly, I’m not at all sure how MZM transformed itself from a two-man law office into a go-go defense and intelligence firm.
For that, it would seem, is the final incarnation of MZM. According to the Center for Public Integrity
……
MZM Inc. is a high-tech national security firm based in Washington, D.C. The private firm provides intelligence gathering, technology and homeland security analysis and consulting for both international and domestic governments and private-sector clients. The firm also provides consulting on political and public message strategies. Its government clients include Congress, the White House, the Defense Department, the U.S. intelligence community, the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force and state and local governments, according to the company’s Web site. MZM refused to provide any information, however, about its corporate structure, including names of other principals.
In addition to its D.C. headquarters, MZM has field offices in Miami, Tampa, San Antonio, San Diego and Suffolk, Va. The company employs about 70 people.
Following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, MZM expanded its counterintelligence and national security efforts. It soon experienced an influx of government contracts. The company now predicts a growth rate of more than 35 percent in the 2003 fiscal year. Mitchell Wade, president and CEO, reportedly expects to increase sales from $25 million to $120 million and to hire 230 more employees over the next five years. Wade told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that recently the company has “come out of a flat period” with defense industry contracts.
In September 2003, MZM collaborated with 16 other organizations, called the General Dynamics team, as part of a five-year, $252 million contract to provide engineering and information warfare services to the Air Force Information Warfare Center at Lackland Airforce Base in Texas.
In November 2002, MZM opened a computer center in Charlottesville, Va., to house classified engineering intelligence in a digital mapping and architecture analysis system. Twelve employees in that office are developing the program for the Pentagon. It is designed to provide digital maps of thousands of buildings worldwide. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the mapping system will help soldiers and planners know details of buildings — even which way doors open and close.
……
At least we are given some indication of what the firm actually does. The data page goes on to name a number of individuals involved with this work — intelligence analysts, generals, the kind of people whom we would expect to be involved with such an enterprise. Cornelison seems to have disappeared.
But how much of this data is on the level? One would think that so august a firm would have a web site. However, the listed URL — http://www.mzinc.com — is blank, as is Google’s cache for that page. Interestingly, Dean found an MZM contract with the DOD dated February 13, 2003 in which MZM states that it has zero employees and zero revenue. The contract is for a mere $12,740,000.
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/
Update [2005-12-10 12:47:8 by Sherlock Google]: Found out more about MZM being investigated for intelligence work for the agency that cooked the aluminum tubes story, used as an excuse to invade Iraq. From the Washington Post:
The NGIC is a critical Army intelligence center with a staff of 900, three-quarters of whom are civilian scientists, engineers and intelligence analysts. The other one-quarter are active military.
Most NGIC employees work at a relatively new facility near Charlottesville, where they produce the Army’s primary intelligence analyses of foreign armies, their force structures and capabilities. Others conduct scientific and technical studies on foreign weapons and technologies.
The NGIC, which is facing an inquiry by the director of national intelligence for its prewar mistakes in analyzing Iraq’s weapons programs, has been drawn into the federal investigations of MZM, according to Army and Justice Department spokesmen.
The NGIC was criticized in March by the Silberman-Robb presidential commission for “gross failure” in its analysis of Iraqi arms. The commission said the center was “completely wrong” when it found in September 2002 that the aluminum tubes Iraq was purchasing were “highly unlikely” to be used for rocket motor cases.
That inaccurate finding bolstered a CIA contention that the tubes were meant for nuclear centrifuges and were evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program. Two NGIC analysts who produced the inaccurate finding have received annual performance awards each year since 2002. Officials said the bonuses were for their overall activities.
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the deputy director of national intelligence, told reporters June 29 that his office would conduct its own inquiry into the Silberman-Robb finding.
When Parker, the center spokeswoman, was asked last week about Rich, his son and NGIC personnel going to work for MZM or MZM employees working at the NGIC, she said in a statement that “due to the ongoing investigation on MZM, we must refer all questions concerning MZM, its employees and activities” to the Justice Department.
The MZM investigation is being carried out by the FBI, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. attorney’s offices in the District of Columbia and San Diego, according to one law enforcement official. That official would not say where the intelligence center may fit in.
MZM Involvement in Aluminum Tubes LIE!
Update [2005-12-10 16:54:41 by Sherlock Google]: Found by Rockmoonwater downthread, here is a look at the Group W/Perfect Wave Lobbying Report in which they report less than $10,000 income for Group W. Looks fishy, less than $10,000. Also shows how they split everything up at Group W to no doubt avoid certain disclosure.
Group W Lobby Reports and Registrations
There you have it! THE. BIGGEST. SCANDAL. EVER!
These Wilkes and MZM companies were mostly frauds, bull, a sham, counterfeit, simulated, false. They were fronts to collect quid pro quo contracts from fellow GOP wingnuts.
The taxpayer money went straight from the US Treasury to the Wilkes and MZM PACS and from there cycled back to the GOP campaigns and the GOP K Street Cartel.
All the while, DoD never asked for these contracts and even complained about ADCS and was ignored!
Kudos to LieparDestin on this one, whose diary scrolled off before we could realize what Cannonfire and this John Dean fellow had uncovered.
Oh and RECOMMEND like you’ve never recommended before. Read it out loud to your family and friends for fun and enjoyment. Send the link to blogs, lists, etc. We need a Blog Swarm!
This is very good reporting. The neo cons are very slick. We need to be slicker . The truth must be put out there.
Keep up the good work – Maybe you should see if Sen. McCain would investigate this money laundering being done by his estwhile GOP Party Leadership.Maybe we should give John McCain the opportunity to be our Teddy Roosevelt !
Alba Etie