Kudos to the AP for revealing that Democratic Leader Harry Reid was involved in an unethical financial deal that netted him money most of us can only dream of. Here’s the beginning of the AP’s report:
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn’t personally owned the property for three years, property deeds show.
In the process, Reid did not disclose to Congress an earlier sale in which he transferred his land to a company created by a friend and took a financial stake in that company, according to records and interviews.
The Nevada Democrat’s deal was engineered by Jay Brown, a longtime friend and former casino lawyer whose name surfaced in a major political bribery trial this summer and in other prior organized crime investigations. He’s never been charged with wrongdoing — except for a 1981 federal securities complaint that was settled out of court.
Land deeds obtained by The Associated Press during a review of Reid’s business dealings show:
_The deal began in 1998 when Reid bought undeveloped residential property on Las Vegas’ booming outskirts for about $400,000. Reid bought one lot outright, and a second parcel jointly with Brown. One of the sellers was a developer who was benefiting from a government land swap that Reid supported. The seller never talked to Reid.
_In 2001, Reid sold the land for the same price to a limited liability corporation created by Brown. The senator didn’t disclose the sale on his annual public ethics report or tell Congress he had any stake in Brown’s company. He continued to report to Congress that he personally owned the land.
_After getting local officials to rezone the property for a shopping center, Brown’s company sold the land in 2004 to other developers and Reid took $1.1 million of the proceeds, nearly tripling the senator’s investment. Reid reported it to Congress as a personal land sale.
The complex dealings allowed Reid to transfer ownership, legal liability and some tax consequences to Brown’s company without public knowledge, but still collect a seven-figure payoff nearly three years later.
Reid hung up the phone when questioned about the deal during an AP interview last week.
But in a news conference Wednesday in Las Vegas, the senator said he believed he did nothing wrong but was willing to change his ethics report’s account of the sale if the Senate Ethics Committee ordered him to do so.
“Everything I did was transparent,” Reid said. “I paid all the taxes. Everything is fully disclosed to the ethics committee and everyone else. As I said, if there is some technical change that the ethics committee wants, I’ll be happy to do that.”
The senator’s aides said no money changed hands in 2001 and that Reid instead got an ownership stake in Brown’s company equal to the value of his land. Reid continued to pay taxes on the land and didn’t disclose the deal because he considered it a “technical transfer,” they said.
They also said they have no documents proving Reid’s stake in the company because it was an informal understanding between friends.
The 1998 purchase “was a normal business transaction at market prices,” Reid spokesman Jim Manley said. “There were several legal steps associated with the investment during those years that did not alter Senator Reid’s actual ownership interest in the land.”
Senate ethics rules require lawmakers to disclose on their annual ethics report all transactions involving investment properties — regardless of profit or loss — and to report any ownership stake in companies.
You can read the whole thing here.
It’s a sleazy story about a sleazy man. As I said, I’m impressed that the AP fulfilled an old-fashioned journalistic function and published this type of investigative story. What I really wonder is whether the rest of the media will run with it, so that there are hundreds and hundreds of mentions about Reid’s nefarious dealings, strident calls for his resignation, and angry articles and commentaries decrying corrupt Democratic leadership. I kind of doubt we’ll see that happening. I do, however, think it behooves bloggers to be aware of this story. While I don’t believe we should sully ourselves by turning it into a cause celebre, the fact is that if the MSM buries it, it will shine as an example of the agenda-driven media in this country.
UPDATE: The Captain has a good summary of the more unsavory aspects of Reid’s dealings. He was consorting with people with shady, borderline criminal activities, and he was pushing through legislation solely intended to benefit the men with whom he did business. It may not be illegal, but it’s certainly unethical. And as I noted in my post, I was less concerned with Reid’s ethics, and more curious about whether the MSM would jump all over the issue. The Captain indicates that the NY Times coverage whitewashed salient facts.
UPDATE II: Just a little something to think about when contemplating the possibility that the MSM may not be entirely evenhanded in dealing with scandals on either side of the aisle.
Filed under: Democrats, Media matters
“What I really wonder is whether the rest of the media will run with it….”
Liar, liar, pants on fire!! You do NOT “wonder” if they’re going to do that – you’re not that stupid. You know perfectly well that none of that is going to happen.
I consider it a minor miracle that the AP did such a complete story on this ugly little bit of self-dealing that Reid hoped he could keep hidden.
[...] Bookworm Room [...]
Doesn’t past the smell test but it depends on how the LLC was set up for tax purposes — as partnership between Reid and Brown, corporation, or single member (presumably Reid) disregarded entity. I’d suspect the last because it allows single member to place assets nominally in corporate name but retain actual control, and technically a “disregarded entity” might not be required on Senate financial disclosure reports. I’m not quite sure how the capital gain on the sale would be reported.
This isn’t really news: people in Las Vegas have known for years about Federal landswaps engineered by Sen. Reid that benefited a real estate company that was/is owned, I believe, by his son-in-law. Just like people in the Bay area have known for years about Nancy Pelosi’s companies’ anti-union and anti-environmental policies. One Lefty actually had the cojones to tell me that these things don’t matter, as long as these multi-millionaires support the right causes and talk the talk.
Republians and Democrats both do wrong sometimes. The difference in the parties is how other members their own react. Foley is gone but Barney Franks is still there. Reid and Pelosi are also still there.
Reid said he referred it to the Senate Ethics Committee.
Fat chance anything will happen there.. since many senators have dark little secrets they wish to remain dark and don’t wish to stir the fire.
Reid will get a pass….
ExP (Jack)
remeber book, THE 24 HOUR RULE! know it and love it. you just can’t trust yourself to alone to gauge the merit of any particular story and you end up making yourself look sillier and sillier as you hastily peddle this nonsense out:
not a day later and it looks like there is ABSOLUTELY FREAKIN NOTHING! to the harry reid land deal thingy. this from disgruntled republican john cole (who initially overreacted as well but who at least has the decency to admit that he was just fed a b.s. sandwich):
http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=7450
and via the instapundit:
” It looks like Brown did all the work and cut his friend Reid in on the deal. The AP report contains no evidence that there was anything crooked about the transactions themselves, although they apparently were never documented. Basically, the partners bought land that was zoned for residential use, and persuaded local authorities to change the zoning to commercial, then sold out to developers who put up a shopping center. Brown obtained the re-zoning in part by emphasizing Reid’s participation in the deal.
Is there anything wrong with this? Not necessarily. You can make easy money by buying land on the outskirts of a fast-growing town like Las Vegas. It helps if you have the influence to get zoning changed, but, to be fair, there’s nothing wrong with re-zoning land to permit commercial development as a community grows outward.
It does appear, though, that Reid clearly violated Senate ethics rules by failing to disclose the existence of the LLC and his partnership with Brown. He reported the income, but not the relationship. I suspect the reason for Reid’s reticence is explained by the AP’s description of his friend’s history.”
http://instapundit.com/archives/033154.php
–but parse on book, it’s what you do best.
peace
Now, when will we start looking into the fact that one of the county commissioners, who has responsibility for rezoning and establishing land valkues, seems to be Harry Reid’s kid?
I’d like to see this as a Democratic October surprise
An October Revolution, eh Bookworm? My, My.
Fat chance anything will happen there.. since many senators have dark little secrets they wish to remain dark and don’t wish to stir the fire.
A strength and also a weakness. It prevents them from acting, but it also provides an avenue from which they may be destroyed. All it remains is for a person with the power of the Executive Branch, police and military, to be willing to take them down. A bit of Teddy Roosevelt anti-trust ruthlessness is required. Too much of the Bush type compassion, however, and you will most likely get talks, compromises, and “deals”.
When will we all see that Reynolds in his oh-so-low-key way, is shilling for the other side. Check out his long post about, of all things, survival gear and how he approves of it.
Survival gear???? It’s being featured everywhere. Why???
The hurricane season is almost over, wildfires and floods haven’t been much of a problem this year and no asteroid or comet is on a collision course with the earth. Non-moonbats have won the Nobel Peace Prize and the prize for literature for the first time in decades and an Americans economist and other scientists have swept their categories.
So why mass market survival kits now?
The timing just weeks before a pivotal election suggests that it’s just another part of the concerted multi-culti effort to scare people into thinking that we’re in imminent danger, so we’ll oust Bushco and reinstall the left into what they think is their rightful place in the halls of power.
Yeah yeah, conspiracy nutcase. You better believe there’s a conspiracy, a conspiracy among the worldwide coalition of lefties to undercut the U.S. and return us to our former weak position as a wholly owned subsidiary of the U.N.