It’s been a rough week for Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, defense contractor MZM’s #2 man in Congress. It’s as clear as it can be that the man’s as guilty as sin of taking huge payoffs from MZM and its founder, Mitchell Wade. The FBI is now investigating, subpoenas have gone out, and now Cunningham has been subpoenaed in another matter, he announced on the floor of the House yesterday (as he’s required to do, under ethics regulations.)
So what about MZM’s #1 man in Congress, Virgil Goode? Well, damned if things aren’t starting to look rough for him, too. So far, Goode is only known to have taken — altogether legally — over $100,000 from MZM employees, their spouses, and MZM’s PAC. But yesterday brought the news from San Diego — where Rep. Cunningham lives — that Goode’s contributions were squeezed out of unwilling MZM employees:
“By the spring of ’02, Mitch was twisting employees’ arms to donate to his MZM PAC,” said one senior former employee. “We were called in and told basically either donate to the MZM PAC or we would be fired.”
[…]
The three former MZM officials declined to be identified for this article, describing Wade as vindictive and saying they feared for their careers if their names were disclosed. MZM paid its employees double or triple what they could make elsewhere, making the contributions a cost of doing business for them, they said.
[…]
A third former employee of MZM described being rounded up along with other employees one afternoon in the company’s Washington headquarters and told to write a check with the political recipient standing by. The former employee didn’t give the name of the politician receiving the donations.
For the first time, the San Diego Union-Tribune, who has been following this story more closely than any other media outlet, specifically names Rep. Virgil Goode as being caught up in all of this. So far, Goode has refused to comment, which is unusual for a normally talkative politician.
I wonder — could Rep. Goode be the recipient standing by and waiting for his coerced checks in MZM’s Washington headquarters? Did he know that his contributions were forced? To what degree have the $101,176 contributions from MZM influenced his approval of $68,645,909 in no-bid federal contracts with MZM in 2004 alone?
So many questions, and no answers from Goode. If he’s done nothing wrong, he’d best start talking. It’s not smart to ignore the Washington Post. The more it looks like he’s hiding something, the more likely it is he’s going to be wrapped up in Rep. Cunningham and Mitchell Wade’s inevitable indictments.
You wrote:
“One more note: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have issued a press release urging an ethics investigation into both Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who started all of this, and into Virgil Goode.”
This is incorrect. Goode’s name was mentioned in the release, but not as a subject of an investigation.
Also, the “federal training program” in Goode’s troops-on-the-border amendment, and the amendment itself, is justa canard. The leadership let it come to a vote only because they were certain to remove it in conference, when the Senate and House work out their differences on a piece of legislation. Also, Cunningham voted against it because he represents San Diego…immigration and border control issues often break down regional lines.
No, Goode was named as a subject of investigation, as this press release states:
They can’t make it much clearer. :)
Seriously, that’s not the press release you linked in your blog. The one above is from the 20th, the one you linked is from the 17th.
They can’t make it much clearer, but surely you can.
Clearly, the only rational conclusion that we can come to is that I’m psychic.