Probably a good thing for Rep. Don Young that he can use his campaign funds to pay his legal bills.  His legal defense fund hasn't proven all that lucrative:

The majority of the $54,000 Young received in the fund came from fishing and construction companies based in Alaska or the state of Washington.

Former Rep. Billy Evans (D-Ga.) and his wife, Renetta, wrote a $2,000 check, as did William Corbus, the former state revenue commissioner under then-Gov. Frank Murkowski (R).

The companies that gave include: Trident Seafoods Corporation, Seattle-based Aleutian Spray Fisheries, as well as one of its subsidiaries, Starbound, LLCBering Pacific Services Company, Boyer Towing Inc., Cruz Construction Inc., Osborne Construction Company and Tatonduk Outfitters Limited.

 

Another prominent Alaska public official was indicted yesterday.  Alaska has been a hot bed of corruption and federal investigations, which is why the Anchorage Daily News wonders who is next?

The indictment of state Sen. John Cowdery culminates another investigation of a public official targeted in federal raids, subpoenas and wiretaps in Alaska over the last two years.

But what of the far more powerful and prominent elected officials also in the sights of the FBI, IRS and other federal agencies, men like U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, his son Ben, and U.S. Rep. Don Young?

Ben Stevens, the former Alaska Senate president, was probably the best known among those whose legislative offices were searched in a series of raids on Aug. 31, 2006. Nearly a year later, the FBI and IRS searched Ted Stevens' home in Girdwood, in part to document an extensive addition built by Veco Corp. employees and contractors. Young is also under investigation for his ties to Veco and for an earmark he sponsored for a Florida highway interchange sought by a key campaign contributor.

Ben and Ted Stevens and Young say they have done nothing wrong, and federal prosecutors and agents won't say where their investigations are going or when they might get there.

Alaska's only congressman, Don Young, has been facing numerous ethical scandals for which he is currently facing a federal investigation.   CREW named him one of the most corrupt members of Congress.  Not only using campaign funds to pay his own legal funds, Rep. Don Young is also paying the legal fees of a top staffer:

With an election-year corruption investigation looming, U.S. Rep. Don Young has tapped his campaign war chest to pay not only his own million-dollar legal tab but also to hire lawyers for his campaign manager, who is also under FBI scrutiny.

The Alaska Republican spent more than $35,000 between October and April on lawyers for longtime campaign manager Steven Dougherty. That's more than Dougherty made during that period and nearly as much as the campaign spent on political polling, according to campaign finance reports.

 

The payments, which are legal under federal law as long as they are associated with the candidate's official duties, are another indication of how the FBI investigation has become a drag on the congressman. Instead of coasting to a 19th term, Young is shelling out money to pay his bills and Dougherty's even as he faces a well-funded opponent in August's Republican primary.

 

"With respect to people who have served him and been loyal to him and who have served Alaska, he's been loyal back," said Young's campaign spokesman, Mike Anderson.

There are only two incumbent federal candidates on the ballot in Alaska.  Both are facing primary and general election challenges.  As the Anchorage Daily News reports, both are also facing the possibility of criminal indictments:

Campaigning under the cloud of federal investigations is tough enough, but could Sen. Ted Stevens or Rep. Don Young have the added worries of an indictment before they face the voters? Would prosecutors wait until after the election to bring charges to avoid the appearance of meddling in Alaska politics?

It's been 21 months since the federal corruption investigation surfaced in Alaska with a series of dramatic raids on legislative and other offices. Eight cases have been brought, resulting in convictions in all but one -- and that matter is still pending.

No one outside the government is privy to where the investigation is headed and whether it will eventually lead to charges against Stevens and Young, who deny wrongdoing but who won't discuss specifics about the allegations.

It remains especially difficult to charge members of Congress for matters related to legislation. The Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause offers a broad shield against interference by the Justice Department and other agencies of the executive branch into how a congressman might have created, for example, an earmark that benefited a campaign contributor, family member or former aide -- matters that are part of the investigations of Young and Stevens.

Today's Anchorage Daily News provides an update of the ongoing public corruption investigations involving key figures from Alaska:

• Veco's relationship with state legislators. During trials, the Veco executives described bribing or otherwise exerting improper influence over several officials. Among them: former Senate President Ben Stevens, whom Veco officials admitted paying more than $240,000 in phony consulting contracts to act on the company's behalf in the Legislature.

• U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. FBI and IRS agents performed an extensive search of Stevens' Girdwood home in July, and ex-Veco CEO Bill Allen testified in former Rep. Pete Kott's trial that company employees oversaw and provided labor for an extensive remodeling there. The government is also investigating some of his legislation that benefited his son or former staff members.

• U.S. Rep. Don Young. In Alaska, Young has been reported to be under scrutiny for ties to Veco and others over his use of earmarks. Veco executives are his largest group of political donors. One of Young's top aides pleaded guilty last year in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, which is still being investigated. And last week, Congress asked the Justice Department to investigate one of Don Young's earmarks, $10 million for an interchange in Florida that would benefit one of his campaign donors. Young has reported spending more than $1 million in campaign funds for legal fees since last year as the investigations of his actions mount.

• Fisheries. A number of companies involved with the North Pacific fishing industry received subpoenas from federal investigators asking about their dealings with Ben Stevens (who worked as a consultant in the industry), his ex-partner Trevor McCabe (an ex-aide to Sen. Ted Stevens), the Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board (created by Ted Stevens to award federal grants earmarked by Stevens for the industry and chaired for a time by Ben). CIRI, the regional Alaska Native corporation in Anchorage that once had Ben Stevens as a consultant, was also subpoenaed in the investigation, though its officials declined to say what evidence was sought.

The Anchorage Daily News has a lot of questions for Rep. Don Young.  But, like the rest of us, the paper isn't getting any answers.  Today, the ADN called on Congress to investigate the Coconut Road earmark, too: 

Let Justice proceed -- and let's have Congress take its own hard look, with subpoena power and little delay.

And, there's more:

WHY $1.1 MILLION FOR LAWYERS?

Alaskans still have reason to wonder why Rep. Young has spent $1.1 million on lawyers.

Let's be clear -- Rep. Young has not been charged with any wrongdoing, has not been indicted for anything. But a majority of his colleagues voted to investigate him. The suspicion, naturally, is that there's more than what Rep. Young called "innuendo" to investigate.

Rep. Young took the floor of the House last week and declared his innocence. That doesn't settle the matter.

Last month we argued for one investigation or the other, as long as it cleared the air. Let's be sure. Both Congress and Justice should investigate -- the sooner the better.

BOTTOM LINE: Both Congress and the Justice Department should take a hard look at the Coconut Road deal.

Today's media coverage on the House vote for an investigation of the "Coconut Road" earmark address the concerns raised by CREW after the Senate and House votes.  The reality is the investigation by the Department of Justice won't proceed -- and the rather important document called Constitution of the United States is one of the biggest roadblocks:

But critics contend that House members may be so open to an investigation precisely because they know it won’t go anywhere. “It’s laughable,” said Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “They want the headlines, so they’re going to do this. But it’s an absolute farce.”

Stanley Brand, a former general counsel for the House, said the barriers to investigation and prosecution — especially in the Coconut Road case — arise straight from the Constitution. “The Speech or Debate Clause would prevent Justice from questioning lawmakers about what happened on the House floor or outside in the enrollment process,” he told Politico this week. “That’s the essential nature of the crime, or the alleged crime.”

“There’s nothing outside the scope of the clause,” Brand added. “I don’t know what they’re doing.”

As promised in the post below, here is CREW's statement on today's House vote for a Department of Justice investigation of the Coconut Road earmark.   From Melanie Sloan:

First CREW would like to commend Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) attention to the Coconut Road earmark and his relentless pursuit to get to the bottom of the matter. Clearly, something went seriously awry before the 2005 highway funding bill was sent to the president. It certainly appears as if Rep. Don Young (R-AK) snuck in the earmark in exchange for campaign contributions from Florida developer Daniel Aronoff. Although Rep. Young is now critical of the Senate for ‘meddling in House Affairs,’ the House has long-known about the problems with the Coconut Road earmark. It was Sen. Coburn who would not let the issue die.

In fact, the House Ethics Committee has had a complaint for over a year and took no action whatsoever. Neither the House nor the Senate has a strong track record of policing and punishing the illegal or unethical conduct of their members. This situation perfectly illustrates why Congress needs an independent ethics office -- with subpoena power -- to investigate members.

There are many questions remaining. But, in referring the matter over to the Department of Justice, both the Senate and the House have ignored the Speech or Debate clause, which prevents law enforcement from introducing legislative material (such as an earmark in a bill) as evidence against a lawmaker. Moreover, the House takes an expansive view of the breadth of the Speech or Debate clause. Recently, for example, the House counsel’s office sought to quash a Justice Department subpoena issued to a former Appropriations committee staff member in connection with the criminal investigation into Rep. Jerry Lewis’s (R-CA) earmarks. The House likely will assert the same arguments here.

The American public needs to have confidence that members of Congress are held accountable for their illegal and unethical conduct. Today’s vote is again nothing more than Kabuki theater given the likely constitutional impediment to a Justice Department investigation.

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives will most likely join the Senate by voting for a measure requesting an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice into the now infamous Coconut Road earmark. We'll have CREW's statement on that vote shortly after it occurs. However, before the vote, Rep. Don Young, who is at the center of the controversy, defended the earmark -- but never explained how it got included in the final legislation:

For the first time, Rep. Don Young has offered a public explanation for a secret transportation earmark that so angered fellow lawmakers they called on the Justice Department to investigate it.

Speaking today on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Young acknowledged that he had "been the subject of much innuendo" for the 2005 earmark, which shifted $10 million from a road widening project in southwest Florida to a study of an Interstate interchange that promised to benefit one of Young's campaign donors.

After his speech, the House voted to join a Senate call for a Justice Department investigation into the earmark. The request for an investigation was attached to a bill that makes technical corrections to Young's original 2005 highway spending plan. The bill also allows Florida to spend the $10 million on road widening and not the Coconut Road interchange study.

Young said that the earmark, part of a $286.4 billion highway bill he oversaw as chairman of the House Transportation committee, was never designed to benefit anyone in particular. The accusations have "little if any connection with what actually occurred," Young said in an 11-minute speech on the House floor.

Even as Young defended the earmark, he did not offer an explanation for how it was inserted into the highway-spending bill after the House and Senate both had voted on it. As chairman, Young said, he had no control over the bill enrollment process.

CREW predicted there would be constitutional challenges to the Senate's decision to ask the Justice Department to investigate the controversial Coconut Road earmark.  So, Rep. Young's objection isn't a big surprise:

Rep. Don Young says the Senate overstepped its authority when it voted to seek a federal investigation of an altered earmark.

“What the Senate did was unconstitutional,” the Alaska Republican said Wednesday. “No other body can request an investigation on another body.”

The Senate included language calling for a criminal investigation in a bill (HR 1195) intended to make revisions to the 2005 highway law (PL 109-59).

Any Justice Department investigation would mean scrutiny of Young and his staff, since Young was chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee when a $10 million earmark was changed between final passage and presentation to President Bush.