The Washington Times has the exclusive:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed nearly $100,000 from her political action committee to her husband’s real estate and investment firm over the past decade, a practice of paying a spouse with political donations that she supported banning last year.
Financial Leasing Services Inc. (FLS), owned by Paul F. Pelosi, has received $99,000 in rent, utilities and accounting fees from the speaker’s “PAC to the Future” over the PAC’s nine-year history.
The payments have quadrupled since Mr. Pelosi took over as treasurer of his wife’s committee in 2007, Federal Election Commission records show. FLS is on track to take in $48,000 in payments this year alone – eight times as much as it received annually from 2000 to 2005, when the committee was run by another treasurer.
Lawmakers’ frequent use of campaign donations to pay relatives emerged as an issue in the 2006 election campaigns, when the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal gave Democrats fodder to criticize Republicans such as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas and Rep. John T. Doolittle of California for putting their wives on their campaign and PAC payrolls for fundraising work.
Last year, Mrs. Pelosi supported a bill that would have banned members of Congress from putting spouses on their campaign staffs. The bill – which passed the House in a voice vote but did not get out of a Senate committee – banned not only direct payments by congressional campaign committees and PACs to spouses for services including consulting and fundraising, but also “indirect compensation,” such as payments to companies that employ spouses.
This is not the first time Pelosi has been corrupt with her political action committees. She was previously found guilty by the FEC for running two similar PACs (one of them being PAC to the Future) with the intention of raising twice as much money to give to Democrats. It was funds from those PACs with which she bought loyalty in her bid to become Minority Leader in the House after Dick Gephardt’s retirement.
Pelosi earlier election law violations were detail in Caucus Of Corruption, written by Mark and myself. Looks like Nancy is still up to her old corrupt ways. No suprise there. The question is, will House Republicans let this fade away or will they do something about it?
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