Legal spending by Rep. Jerry Lewis tops $1 million
Rep. Jerry Lewis, the ranking member on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, is under federal investigation. Despite that investigation, House Republican leaders have kept Mr. Lewis in that coveted spot. CREW named him one of the most corrupt members of Congress in our report, Beyond DeLay -- and we asked for his removal from the House Appropriations Committee.
Lewis is spending a lot of his campaign funds on legal fees. Last month, that total spending topped $1 million. TPM Muckraker has the details:
Congratulations to Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) lawyers! They've surpassed $1 million in legal fees from the lawmaker.
Lewis, long-time TPMmers will remember, has been under federal investigation since the spring of 2006 for his ties to defense contractor and convicted criminal Brent Wilkes and lobbyist buddy Bill Lowery.
Since June of 2006, Lewis has paid just over $1 million in campaign funds to some heavy-hitters at the law firm Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher, according to campaign disclosures. A $62,000 payment on December 12th last year put him over the top.
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String of events leading to Lewis being investigated
In 10/06 Jane Harman told us how former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham had abused the earmarking system to grant control of the government's more important grants programs to Cunningham's coconspirator # 1, Brent Wilkes. TSWG (DOD Combating Terorrism Technology Support Office Technical Support Working Group) would be on grants program under Harman's microscope, as would be SBIR programs (Small Business Innovation Research) programs such as the DHS SBIR and DOD's SBIR programs. Only 2 months before, the Associated Press learned that Wilkes and Dusty Foggo (last position was as # 3 at CIA) were being linked to Russia. This is another way of saying that Wilkes controlled grants programs and was denying grants to companies with unique papertrails to government contracting who already had caught TSWG's attention, so that these companies were forced to accept the Kremlin's 100 % financing offers. I know of the situation, because my employer was one of the companies declining the Kremlin's offers, had been forwarded to TSWG in 2002 AFTER it was too late to apply to its grants program, and was referred to the TWIC program (Transportation Worker Identification Credential) for review in 2002. No one passes what they don't find of merit so as not to waste the time of others. To this day, management knows not a soul in TSWG (apart of DARPA). When in 2003 we weren't late to apply for a grant to replace the Kremlin's ever sweetening 100+ % financing offer, as many times as we tried, we were denied a grant in the first of 3 phases companies must pass-go through, and it was done to benefit the Kremlin.
We also targeted the DHS SBIR when it opened its doors in 12/03. In 11/04 we decided to accept a 15 months old German state's financing package, which resulted in Tom Ridge being pushed overboard. What Wilkes and Foggo did to the German financing package is something to be covered at their trial since it involves "strawmen" and "shell companies" mentioned in the indictments.
Next my biz partner/CEO fled to France--another democracy, whereas Russia is controlled by the Russian Mafia. Our operations in France opened 5/1/05. Cunningham went under investigation the following month and right after that I received a buyout offer that was ill-disguised and I knew the Kremlin was the beneficiary. Again, we had problems with strawmen and a shell company (investment) beginning in 10/05. In 11/05 Cunningham took his plea deal...w/in a day of the shell investment company brought in by strawmen hired in 10/05 pledging what we since learned was laundered CIA money. In France, one cannot fire an employee from the day they're hired, and we lacked the proof to prove criminal activity. Non-performance isn't enough proof.
On 5/1/06 Porter Goss told Foggo he had to resign. On 5/5/06 Bush fired Goss for having hired Foggo as # 3 at the CIA. On 5/12/06 Foggo's CIA badge was taken by the FBI and his home and office were raided. That same morning I received another ill-disguised buyout offer that provided information I viewed to be false about our French operation, only to learn it was true at the end of the first week of 6/06. I then sought-out DHS SBIR again trying to move RnD operations back to the US. This situation escalated the last week of 6/06, I called in the middle of an office raid on 6/30 and the program manager's (Tim Sharp) retirement was announced that day.
My company also applied for a grant with NIST in 2002, and too, had been turned-down for a grant in the first phase at the very same time TSWG was passing our platform for review for the TWIC program. In other words, our grants programs were behaving schizophrenic because Wilkes already controlled NIST's grants programs, but didn't gain control of TSWG's until 2003. His control of DHS SBIR was effective at the end of 2003.
The new DHS SBIR program manager appointed in 7/06 was the same person working for Wilkes with NIST's grants programs in 2002. Hence, our French operation didn't move home and the replacement, Ellisa Sobolewski to this day perpetuates the deportation of our platform into Kremlin/Russian mob control. Importantly, Cunningham was long gone from his congressional post! By the timing of when Lewis went under investigation, it is very likely that he was behind the hiring of Sobolewski who is Vladmir Putin's operative at DHS SBIR. Also, the illicit CIA contract was renewed and went back into effect by the last day of 7/06. By 8/06 we were told all Wilkes' contracts had expired. To move the money through the CIA, then through S. Africa and later into our French bank account, the process had to start the month before which is the same month in which Lewis went under investigation for corruption. Lockheed-Digimarc (publicly traded and both majority owned by Putin) seem to have been the contract awardees.
Who are we? Answer: We are inventors of a tech standard called "smart wallet" by NIST in its Biometrics and Security Systems and Applications program. One Senate committee referred to our platform as the most monumental technology to impact our times in 7/05, called for an investigation into our sabotage, and of no coincidence, Christopher Cox jumped ship from the House right afterwards to become SEC chairman without ever going through the formal approval process. Cox had been on the Appropriations Committee, has links to the Kremlin dating back to 1982, was Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, as well as the Financial Services Committee. By jumping over to the SEC, it became impossible for us to go IPO as a penny stock without Cox fabricating false charges against us.
The US congress was supposed to have opened our platform to competition in 10/02. It was the Appropriations Committee who needed to bring us to the table to negotiate a price. The Appropriations Committee has refused to open competition on our platform so that all credentialing companies can compete using our intellectual property, because the Appropriations Committee with Lewis as former Chairman and now ranking member, has a Russian agenda to force our platform be wholly controlled by the Kremlin/Russian Mafia.
TPM muckraker's full posting on this mentioned that $ 900 K was spent by Lewis in 2006 and his legal bills for 2007 were about $ 100 K that then took his total legal bill to exceed $ 1 million. To have spent $ 900 K on legal fees was to have spent it only in the 2nd half of 2006, because that is when Lewis went under investigation for corruption.
The LA US Attorney resigned in 2007 and now works for Lewis' legal defense. The investigation only restarted late in 2007, this time in D.C. With the investigation allegedly back on track, we can expect Lewis to be spending a whole lot more on his legal defense in 2008!
It never was my partner's and my job to keep our platform from the control of organized crime and another government. It was Lewis' and instead he has worked as Putin's operative which means he's a mob operative which means he's a member of the mafia! Our founding forefathers had a system of justice of tarring, feathering, dragging behind a horse and buggy and then hanging from the gallows traitors like Lewis!