An editorial in today's New York Times examines Dennis Hastert's new job at a major D.C. lobbying firm -- and finds it exemplifies the "revolving door"" syndrome:

Mr. Hastert, the G.O.P. stalwart who presided during the Jack Abramoff lobbying corruption debacle and the Mark Foley House page scandal, joined a blue-chip lobbying firm this week as a “strategic counsellor” at an annual salary estimated at $500,000-plus. Mr. Hastert, who has set the sky-box level for politicians second-careering, joins the more prized Congressional and executive alumni who schmooze old pals still in power without the need to formally register as day-to-day lobbyists.

We never really expected Mr. Hastert to indulge the Jeffersonian fantasy and humbly return to his old calling as a high school wrestling coach. Still, his new job as access-enabler highlights the capital reality that old incumbents never die; they just backslap away.

More than 200 former members of Congress have crowded through the revolving door to lobby in recent years. More are lining up at the pay window. Congress’s designated ethics monitors already are bending the rules to let incumbents job shop their private-sector value while still on the privileged elected perch.

Capitol Hill alumni burnish their clout by marshaling the lobbying industry’s fund-raising for cooperative incumbents waiting behind. Inside Washington, none of this is surprising. Outside Washington, voters need to confront candidates who demonize the lobbyists who are actually silent underwriters of their candidacies.

To his credit, Senator Barack Obama has ordered the Democratic National Committee to no longer accept donations from lobbyists and political action committees. Senator John McCain should follow suit.

"The Sleuth" at the Washington Post, ak.a. Mary Ann Akers, breaks the news that the former Speaker was in trouble with the Federal Elections Commission.  Hastert used his campaign funds to pay the legal fees associated with the Mark Foley page scandal.  But, Hastert didn't report those expenditures as required by law: 

As if the Mark Foley page scandal hadn't done enough damage to Republicans. Now we discover that legal bills arising from the tawdry affair landed former Speaker Dennis Hastert in hot water with the Federal Election Commission before he left town.

According to FEC documents, Hastert last January initially failed to disclose that legal fees had wiped out the final bit of cash he had in his campaign account. The Illinois Republican and former high school wrestling coach filed an amended finance report in February showing that his '06 campaign had racked up $147,000 in legal expenses in connection with the Foley investigation. In order to avoid substantial fines (and further debt), Hastert quietly agreed last summer to shut down his campaign and pay a $1,000 penalty, the FEC documents show.

When he publicly announced on August 17 that he wouldn't be seeking re-election, Hastert didn't mention his campaign's legal debt from the Foley scandal, or the settlement his lawyers were brokering with the FEC.

Former Speaker Dennis Hastert will be resigning from Congress before the end of his term according to news reports:

Former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert will resign soon rather than complete his term 15 months from now, ending a 21-year career in Congress, Republican aides said Thursday.

The Illinois Republican had announced in August he would not seek re-election in 2008, but said he planned to finish his current term, which ends in January 2009. Republican aides, speaking on background only because Hastert had not yet publicly announced his new plans, said he now intends to leave office late this year or early next year. 

Think Progress speculates on reasons Hastert may be retiring.  He has been at least tangentially involved in numerous scandals over the past few years.  

In 2006, CREW put Hastert on our members "to watch" list in Beyond DeLay.

Today, the Washington Post took a look at the growing phenomenon of the land deals that have enriched many members of Congress, sometimes through the use of federal aid: 

When Alan B. Mollohan (D-W.Va.) entered the House of Representatives in 1983, he was coming off a year in which his law firm income was $17,474, and he was losing money on two rental properties.

By the end of 2006, according to financial disclosure reports released yesterday, after dabbling in real estate, Mollohan's wealth had soared to between $6 million and $24 million.

J. Dennis Hastert, a former high school teacher and wrestling coach, was first elected to Congress as a Republican from rural Illinois in 1986, showing assets worth at most $270,000. At the end of last year, after his own real estate investments, Hastert had a net worth of $4 million to $17 million.

Open-government and ethics watchdogs say that Mollohan and Hastert are part of a growing circle on Capitol Hill that is engaging in land deals as a path to wealth, and they argue that such transactions have the potential to benefit from legislators' political connections and official actions.

AP reported what a lot of people in DC have been hearing.  The Ethics Committee may be issuing the report on the Mark Foley scandal and cover-up very soon: 

The House ethics committee could be close to finishing its report on ex-Rep. Mark Foley's improper conduct with former pages. Committee members would not comment on when they would issue their findings. Committee leaders said in early October the investigation would be finished in weeks, not months, and members have said privately they did not want to carry the matter over until next year.

The findings would have far greater impact if Republicans had retained control of Congress because questions were raised over the lack of strong action by Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and his top aides.

It's been months, not weeks already to be precise.  Wouldn't be out of character for a report like this to be issued late on a Friday afternoon.  We'll be watching.  

The Courier News in suburban Chicago reports on CREW's request for a Department of Justice investigation of Speaker Dennis Hastert's potentially illegal self-dealing.  The paper examines the underlying land deals and how Hastert benefited: 

An investigation in June by The (Aurora) Beacon News, a sister paper to The Courier News, uncovered the land deals that netted the Yorkville Republican a $1.99 million profit.

In December 2005, Hastert sold for $2.48 million a 69-acre parcel of land he purchased in 2002, taking in a $1.7 million profit. Also that month, he sold for $627,000 a one-quarter interest in an adjacent 70-acre parcel he purchased in 2004, bringing him an additional $287,000 profit.

These deals came four months after Hastert helped earmark $207 million for the Prairie Parkway in the Federal Transportation Bill, which President George W. Bush signed while visiting the Fox Valley in the summer of 2005.

 

The North Country project

 

Hastert's property is a few miles from the path of the parkway and was purchased by the Robert Arthur Land Company. The developer plans to build 1,635 homes, along with 33 acres for commercial development, on 727 acres northwest of Plano.

It will be called the North Country project, along Galena Road, three miles west of the parkway's projected corridor.

Nice profit for the Speaker.  Probably wouldn't have happened without that earmark.  Hastert's only defense is to call CREW "partisan."  Anyone who has read this blog or the news lately knows how laughable that claim is.   

Hastert should have to give an explanation to someone.  That someone should be from the Department of Justice.

CREW's Melanie Sloan discussed the Hastert land/earmarks deal, which netted the Speaker 500% profit, on Al Franken today. You can listen here.

CREW's request for an investigation of Speaker Dennis Hastert's possibly illegal actions has started to generate additional media coverage.  The letter from CREW to the Department of Justice and related documents are here.

United Press International via The Washington Times:

House Speaker Dennis Hastert may have broken the law by pushing for federal funding of the Prairie Parkway west of Chicago.

The Chicago Tribune reports the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has requested the Justice Department look into a land deal that earned Hastert and two partners more than $3 million in profits last year.

CBS2 in Chicago:

Several questions are swirling around outgoing House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and reports that he profited on a federal land deal.

The Chicago Tribune reports that a government watchdog group wants the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the deal.

The group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, says Hastert broke the law by pushing for federal funding for a highway project near land he owned west of Chicago.

He and two partners reportedly made more than $3 million when they sold the land.

Today, CREW formally asked the US Department of Justice to conduct an investigation of Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL). We want to know if Hastert used the earmarks process to get a road built that would benefit him to the tune of a 500% profit. This appears to be a classic case of a member of Congress using the federal appropriations process for his own personal benefit:

As reported in the Chicago Tribune, in August 2002, Speaker Hastert purchased 179 acres of land, inaccessible by road, in Kendall County, Illinois for $925,000, or $5,200 per acre. Then, in February 2004, Speaker Hastert formed a real estate trust with two other land buyers and purchased 69 acres of land adjacent to the original parcel at a cost of $1,033,000, or $15,000 per acre. The trust’s 69 acres was then joined with 69 acres of Speaker Hastert’s land.

The land purchased by the trust was more valuable than Speaker Hastert’s property because it was accessible by road.

In the summer of 2005, the Federal Highway Bill was enacted containing a $207 million earmark inserted by Rep. Hastert for construction of the Prairie Parkway. While the earmark was sufficient only to build about one-third of the entire 36 mile parkway, the language of the legislation mandated that construction take place on the portion of the parkway nearest to Speaker Hastert’s property.

As reported in The New Republic, four months after the bill was signed into law, the trust’s 138 acres was sold to a developer for $4,989,000 or $36,152 an acre. The partners apportioned the proceeds of the sale according to the acreage each had contributed. Thus, Speaker Hastert was credited with 62% ownership on the supposition that his $5,200 per acre land was equal in value to the partnership’s $15,000 per acre land with the result that he received $3,118,000 of the proceeds. While Rep. Hastert’s partners each made a 144% profit on their investment, Speaker Hastert’s profit was 500% of his original investment.

This kind of self-dealing has to end. Ethics reform must include earmarks reform.

Earlier this week, we wrote about a Washingon Post article that revealed how Speaker Dennis Hastert's office stopped an audit of construction work on Capitol Hill -- despite evidence of serious wrongdoing:

In early 2004, as House Appropriations Committee investigators prepared to launch a sensitive audit of highly classified Capitol Hill security upgrades, Hastert's chief counsel made a surprise visit to the first meeting of the auditors.

His message was clear, according to participants: The speaker's office was not happy about the probe and would keep investigators on a tight leash. In September 2005, despite growing evidence of sweetheart deals, kickbacks, wasteful contracts and shoddy work, the probe was suddenly shut down.

Today, CREW asked the Attorney General to investigate the actions of Speaker Hastert's office.  Melanie Sloan laid out the rationale for the request in our news release (the accompanying documents can also be found at that link):

CREW’s executive director Melanie Sloan said, "This entire situation is suspicious. Clearly, DOJ needs to look into the allegations of criminal misconduct in regard to the contracts. In addition, Mr. Van Der Meid’s conduct is suspicious.

"Why wouldn’t the Speaker’s office be interested in pursuing allegations of illegal activity in connection with the security upgrades?" asked Sloan. "As the highest official on Capitol Hill, wouldn’t the Speaker be concerned about claims that the security upgrades were inadequate, endangering the lives of those who work on the Capitol Hill campus? The Department of Justice needs to get to the bottom of this mess."

CREW requested that the Public Integrity Section investigate not only whether kickbacks, bribes and illegal gratuities were exchanged for contracts to upgrade Capitol Hill security, but also why the Speaker’s office, and Mr. Van Der Meid in particular, shut down the Appropriations Committee’s probe into these issues.