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User talk:John Broughton/Lewis-Lowery-Shockey-White lobbying controversy

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  • [2] 2004 background on Lewis - useful only for the article on him.
  • [3] - okay, I've mined this (older - late 1998) article for everything relevant to lobbying (not much); however, it IS quite useful for improving the article on Jerry Lewis himself.

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Calvert, whose 44th District is home to several Copeland Lowery clients, did not return calls seeking comment Thursday. ... In a prepared statement, Calvert said: "I assume the FBI is just doing their due diligence in looking at government agencies and officials from our area. I have not been contacted by the FBI." ... Copeland Lowery has donated more than $30,000 to Calvert's campaigns since 1989. ... Calvert is in line for an appointment to the appropriations committee.

To go in other articles, if not already there, as background, or to be dropped

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  • Lowery started is political career as a San Diego city councilman from 1977-­1980. He was then elected to Congress from the 41st District, which included most of San Diego, after 28-year incumbent Bob Wilson retired. Lowery was reelected five times with little difficulty. (from Wiki-Lowery page)
  • In 1992 congressional districts were re-drawn from the 1990 census. Lowery was drawn out of his old district and into the district of freshman Republican Duke Cunningham. At that time, the "Rubbergate" scandal had just broken, and several members of Congress were found writing bad checks on the House bank. Lowery was one of the worst offenders. Furthermore, Lowery was heavily involved with Don Dixon, who as part of the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s, plundered his Texas savings and loan and forced the U.S. government to bail it out for $1.3 billion. This virtually wiped out any advantage Lowery might have had due to seniority.
  • From TPMMuck: "If you've followed the Wilkes story, you know that the guy who taught Wilkes how Washington works and has been in the mix with him ever since is former Rep. Bill Lowery (R-CA). Wilkes first spent quality time with Lowery back in the 1980s when one of Wilkes' jobs was to take Lowery on trips down to Central America to hang with Kyle "Dusty" Foggo and the Contras
  • From TPMMuck: In 1992 Lowery lost his seat to freshman Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham after the two San Diego reps were pushed into the same district and had to run against each other. Out of work, Lowery decided to become a lobbyist. . . Not surprisingly, after Lowery set up his lobbying firm Copeland Lowery & Jacquez, Wilkes hired him to lobby for his company ACDS. Between 1998 and 2002, Wilkes paid Lowery's outfit some $200,000.
  • TPMMuck: back in 1996, when Jeffrey Shockey was still on his first stint as a staffer with Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), he headed a pack of Republican staffers visiting the Northern Mariana Islands. The staffers were brought there, of course, by none other than Jack Abramoff. So here's my question - was this a relationship that blossomed? Or was Shockey just one of many staffers Abramoff was courting? [I think this is more-or-less a coincidence, and thus a dead end - JB.]
  • LATimes via TPMMuck: Lewis and Cunningham also worked in tandem on Pentagon funding requests that came before the Appropriations Committee, defense contractors and military analysts have told the Union-Tribune.
  • A curious detail: Tom Casey hired Brent Wilkes (who is accused of bribing Duke Cunningham, throwing hooker parties at the Watergate, etc.) as a consultant in 1992. Wilkes reportedly pushed Casey to aggressively pursue earmarks. Wilkes is also known to have had close ties with Bill Lowery as far back as the early 1980s.
  • Richard White was a tobacco lobbyist until 2000. In 1998, he worked as a lobbyist for the Tobacco Institute. And in 1999, he opened his own lobbying firm, Richard White Public Affairs Consulting, with a single client: Brown and Williamson Tobacco. The company paid him $50,000 for the work. Then, as now, White ran his consulting firm out of the White's home in Fort Washington, Maryland, a Washington suburb.
  • Lowery Copeland has collected millions of dollars in lobbying fees from public institutions and businesses that received money through the House Appropriations Committee that Lewis chairs. [6]
  • TPMMuck, quoting Harpers: Ken says sources inside Trident are telling him that the defense firm, which hired White to cajole fat earmarks out of Lewis' committee, was paying Letitia White (a former Lewis staffer known as "the queen of earmarks") what amounts to a commission based on the amount of the Pentagon contracts she secured. That's a big no-no.
  • John Scofield, a spokesman for Lewis spokesman, said that the bill-writing episode described by Casey "just didn't happen." Scofield cast doubt that an aide to Lewis, then a junior committee member and a member of the minority party, would exercise such influence. "Nobody has any recollection of this happening, nor any recollection of any staff ever doing this with any lobbyist on any occasion," Scofield said. "Somebody is giving you some bad information." Patrick Dorton, a spokesman for White, said that she had no recollection of the bill-writing episode described by Casey. [7]
  • Dorton also insisted that White and Karangelen had put equal amounts of money into the house. [8] [Seems to be some confusion about whether Dorton is spokesperson for firm or for White - both?]
  • Silverstein said that contrary to insistences from White and Trident owner Nick Karangelen, his sources say White did not pay for half of the house the two co-own (along with their spouses) on Capitol Hill. "[S]ome of the Trident officials have said that Karangelen actually put up the entire amount, along with additional monies for furnishings".


May be useful

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  • In 2005, those clients included defense heavyweights General Dynamics, Boeing and United Technologies. The firm also represented California localities such as the city of Redlands and San Bernardino County, which are in Lewis's district. Copeland's personal clients include Alameda County, Pacific Life Insurance Co. and BART, the rapid transit system in the San Francisco area. Jacquez's clients include Merced County and the city of Riverside, Calif. [9]
  • From TPMMuck: (June 7): Tonight, Tom Casey, former CEO of now-defunct software company Audre Inc., told NBC News that in 1993 Lewis asked for stock and favors for his friend, lobbyist Bill Lowery, in exchange for a multi-million-dollar earmark.... [10] [11]
  • In 2005 the California state Senate became a client. The registration form filed by Lowery Copeland says it will lobby for "a fair share of federal funds" for the state. [12]
  • The lobbying duties for Lewis' constituents were handled primarily by Jeffrey Shockey, who worked for Lewis, then Lowery, and now Lewis again.
  • As word traveled, the cities of San Bernardino, Highland, Twentynine Palms, Victorville, Murrieta and Loma Linda signed on. So did San Bernardino and Riverside counties, along with the San Joaquin Council of Governments and several universities. Redlands, Lewis' hometown, wanted a hired hand in Washington, as did the University of Redlands. [13]
  • Twentynine Palms got $200,000 earmarked for a visitor center. [14]
  • The town of Yucca Valley got $100,000 earmarked for a civic center park and a half million dollars for a solar energy project. [15]
  • Since 1998, Lowery has charged Riverside County $1 million; [16]
  • Since 1998, Lowery has charged the University of Redlands $580,000; [17]
  • Since 1998, Lowery has charged Victorville Redevelopment Agency $180,000; [18]
  • The city of Loma Linda has paid Copeland Lowery about $150,000 since 2001, said City Manager Dennis Halloway. The firm is the only lobbying outfit of any kind employed by the city, he said. "We have gotten money from the feds," Halloway said. "Have they played a role in it? I guess I would say they have." [19]
  • Since 1998, Lowery has charged Sanbag $40,000; [20]
  • Since 1998, Lowery has charged Inland Valley Development Agency $20,000. [21]


  • City of Loma Linda: High Priority Project Earmark Changes in Newest TEA LU Version

The Manager's Amendment incorporated into TEA LU on the House Floor on Thursday, April 1, makes a variety of adjustments to High Priority Project earmarks. The largest changes in the earmarks were increase in two Alaska projects -- one from $3 million to $125 million and the other from $3 million to $200 million. California's largest changes were the addition of two projects at $50 million each in Kern County and the addition of $19 million to a project to reconstruct an I-10 interchange in Loma Linda, bringing its total to $23 million [22]

Don't want to include

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  • Lewis helped secure funding for a $1.6 billion Navy-Marine project. Cerberus Capital Management, an investment group, which profited significantly from the project, held a major fund-raiser for the National Republican Congressional Committee, headed by Lewis, one day before the project's funding was secured. Lewis also was head of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee at the time. He flatly denies he knew Cerberus would benefit from the Navy project. "It is absolutely and unequivocally false to suggest that any decision on funding for the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet was in any way based on a lobbyist's request, or as a favor to someone who was donating campaign funds, Lewis said in a statement. [23] (Exclude: no lobbyist involved; NRCC involvement just muddies the water.) (NOTE: should be separate section in Jerry Lewis (politician) article on this - see extensive information here.)
    • Defense contractor Thomas Casey of Audre Recognition Systems Inc., a San Diego firm that specialized in automated document conversion software, said he had told investigators that in 1993, Lewis' top appropriations aide, White, escorted him and Brent Wilkes, who was working for Audre at the time, to a basement room in the Capitol where House Appropriations Committee staffers drafted legislation. There, according to Casey, he was seated in front of a word processor and was asked to type a paragraph into the defense bill that would be so specific that it would limit competition. Casey said he drafted the second paragraph and that the final bill included much of the language Casey wrote, although the earmark was slashed to $14 million. After initially receiving $4 million in Pentagon contracts under the 1994 earmark, Audre had no further awards, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1995. [24]
A November 1994 article in Federal Computer Week said Lewis "appears to have played the biggest role on the Hill as an Audre advocate," writing letters to defense officials urging them to expand the program. The trade journal also uncovered in financial disclosure reports that White, then Lewis' aide, had bought stock in Audre on Nov. 3, 1993, one week before the passage of the final bill. [25] (Exclude: Audre never hired Copeland Lowery, and never offered stock options to Lowery.)
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