McCain Embroiled in Telecom Lobbying Scandal

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There's a report circulating today that the New York Times has a story coming up that details extensive involvement between Senator McCain and a telco lobbyist that may have resulted in the telco retro-active immunity provision of the new FISA amendment.

That legislation was pulled until after the Holiday recess by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid after efforts by Senator Christopher Dodd and a handful of other Democratic Senators engaged in a filibuster against their own party, and it was made clear that even if there were more than enough votes to invoke cloture at every step, the slowed process would have put other much more important legislation at risk.

McCain came out against the story with statements this afternoon from the campaign trail telling the Associated Press that "I've never done any favors for anybody — lobbyist or special interest group — that's a clear, 24-year record." The Senator also said he finds the timing of issue "very interesting" and compares this story to smears made against him during his failed 2000 presidential campaign.

According to Matt Drudge, McCain has hired legal counsel to pressure the Times to hold back on the story until after the primaries, or kill it outright.

Additionally, according to Drudges account, "Rutenberg had hoped to break the story before the Christmas holiday, sources reveal, but editor Keller expressed serious reservations about journalism ethics and issuing a damaging story so close to an election."

This is the part where Glenn Greenwald would reign down fire and surfer on a "corrupt" and "complacent" press that is more interested in manipulating the political scene either through specific actions or not acting at all, rather than simply reporting the news.

Then he'd tell you about how it's not exactly a secret than telecom immunity is overwhelmingly disfavored by the public, but remains a top and nearly unstoppable priority in Washington due entirely to pressure from lobbyists who have contributed heavily to the players on the Senate Intelligence Committee that crapped out a bill ripe with immunity that would forgive willful lawbreaking and privacy invasions on an epic scale for extremely wealthy corporations, that would never be granted to any of us.

That is pretty much a given.

It's why Republicans fought so hard against lobbying reform in the Senate this year, and why Trent Lott is retiring less than a year after winning a new six year term which he pledged to serve out. If Lott waited any longer, he'd be subject to the new lobbying rules that would ban him from lobbying for two years rather than just one, from the rules currently in effect.

Although Drudge says this story has been in the works for six weeks, it may have been accelerated by a court order issued about three weeks ago, compelling the Director of National Intelligence to release documents on meetings between the Bush administration and telecom lobbyists that were directly related to the controversial immunity provision.

According to Ryan Singel, author of "Threat Level", a Wired blog, the government initially agreed to the EFF's FOIA request but ended up sitting on it for months, until the EFF sought a court order to compel the disclosure before the upcoming primaries.

Quoting from the order, as referenced by Singel (bold mine, emphasis original):

Plaintiff is correct that defendant has failed to provide the Court with "specific information that might explain why it will require four months to process 'approximately 250 pages of unclassified material and approximately sixty-five pages of classified material' identified as responsive to the FOIA requests." Reply at 6 (quoting Opp'n at 6).

That's a pace of 2.5 pages per day over the course of four months, by the way.

[T]he agency's description of its United States District Court processing methods in this case—which apparently are assigned to a single agent—appear to be wholly inadequate to the task of handling an expedited request, let alone a standard request, on the timely basis required by Congress. See Hackett Decl. ¶ 8. While defendant notes that it has a small FOIA staff, that argument is more properly directed at Congress, not to the courts.

Note the part where it says "required by Congress", not "suggested" or "intended", but factually required that requests be processed -- within reason -- as fast as possible.

It was inevitable that some of the presidential candidates would be wrapped up in this fiasco when these documents came to light precisely because we already know how beholden to special interest lobbyists most politicians are, regardless of party or principle -- at least those that serve in the House and Senate.

Senator McCain, as others have noted, has already been through one lobbying scandal before, after being tied to Charles Keating and the 80's securities fraud.

This shouldn't have and for many people wasn't unexpected at all, it is in fact the very reason the government fought so hard to keep these documents away from the public, and why McCain is fighting so hard right now to keep this story out of the papers.

Greenwald at Salon (Nov 29th):

Needless to say, the Bush administration raised every argument it could to avoid having to disclose this information. These disclosures will reveal -- among other things -- which telecom lobbyists and other representatives were meeting with DNI Michael McConnell in order to secure telecom amnesty, as well as which members of Congress McConnell and other Bush officials privately lobbied. As an argument of last resort, the administration even proposed disclosing these documents on December 31 so that -- as EFF pointed out -- the information would be available only after Congress passed the new FISA bill. The court rejected every administration claim as to why it should not have to disclose these records.

The deadline for release of these documents was exactly 10 days ago, leaving little time for reporters to read through them and conduct investigations based on what they've seen. That this specific story has been in the works for over a month, and that McCain seems to afraid of its publication, .. well you do the math.

Quoting McCain spokesperson Jill Hazelbaker today (AP), "John McCain has a 24-year record of serving this country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the important issues facing our country. Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics."

Given McCain's factual involvement with a previous lobbying scandal, it's not hard to believe that as one of the most conservative hawks in the Senate that welcomes lobbying money and fights lobbying reform at every turn, is knee deep in special interests every single day of the week.

If anything, Americans are sick and tired of politicians that go to Washington under the false pretense of representing the wishes of the voters that put them there in the first place, only to suck up corporate lobbying money like sponges and begin passing legislation that is repugnant and even damaging to their constituents in return.

Mudslinging barely makes the top 10 when it comes to that kind of political corruption where elected representatives become de facto employees of billion dollar corporations such as AT&T -- companies that by the way are making hundreds of millions of dollars from these illegally spying contracts which they have a vested self-interest in protecting at any cost.

Update:
On a side note, Glenn wrote about the new "party of obstruction" this morning and it's quite telling about how incredibly full of @!$%# the Republican party has been for the past seven years, and still is today:

The 62nd cloture vote of the session is more than any single session of Congress since at least 1973, the earliest year cloture votes are available online from the Senate. Republicans are on pace to force 134 cloture votes to cut off a filibuster, according to the Campaign for America's Future analysis, more than double the historical average of the last 35 years.

For those paying attention, this has been known since the first months of the year. This is the same Republican party that just a year ago threatened to rewrite Senate rules to ban filibusters on judicial nominees when Democrats for the first time in six years took a united stance on just about anything.

Today, those same people that were calling Democrats the "party of obstruction" have taken it so far that the term is simply no longer accurate. They are the consummate serial abusers of the filibuster that would make a seven-year-old holding his breath blush with envy.

There is no defensible reason for using the filibuster or the threat of one on every single piece of legislation that the minority party disagrees with, especially which such a militant president still in office that can easily veto anything he doesn't like, on top of one of the weaker Democratic majority leaders in the recent past that will cave on virtually every issue.

If ever we needed to be reminded why this country put Democrats back into power in Congress, this is it. If you've wondered why they've gotten virtually nothing done outside of January, this is why.

The text of this article is Copyright © 2007 Paul William Tenny. All rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Attribution by: full name and original URL.

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