Dennis Hastert, please disclose.

In the September 2005 Issue of Vanity Fair, David Rose wrote an article called An Inconvenient Patriot which documented some of the details about Sibel Edmonds' story.

In the article, Rose describes an FBI counter-intelligence operation investigating attempts to bribe elected members of Congress in DC and Chicago dating back to 1997. An FBI Counterintelligence official who worked on this particular case noted that according to "some of the wiretaps, the F.B.I.’s targets had arranged for tens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks."

These efforts appear designed to slip under the Federal Election Commission regulations which stipulate that only donations greater than $200 are required to be itemized in public filings.

Rose's article suggests that these payments/bribes were made by certain Turkish lobbying groups as the price for Hastert's decision to torpedo a proposed congressional resolution which would recognize the Armenian genocide.

Despite many attempts by Vanity Fair, Hastert declined to provide any information refuting the claims, and in the six months since then, his office has simply dismissed the claims as 'ridiculous' - until now. In the most recent edition, Vanity Fair published a letter from Hastert's lawyer Randy Evans which purports to debunk some of the claims in Rose's article - but the letter is transparently disingenuous to anyone remotely familiar with the details. (see here for Evans' letter, and responses from both David Rose and Sibel Edmonds)

It isn't obvious why Hastert decided to respond to these charges in VF now, six months after Rose's article, but it is very clear that the response is unsatisfactory.

Dennis Hastert is two heartbeats, and two impeachment motions, away from the presidency. It's up to him to prove that he is worthy of the position - a good starting point would be the debunking of these very serious allegations that he is in the pocket of foreign interest groups.

Hastert must come clean now and release the detail of all of his campaign contribution data, for all of his PACs and any other fund-raising vehicles.


(I'm in the process of developing some campaign ideas and some action-items and should have more in the next week)

(cross-posted at Disclose, Denny)