Feds Treading Close to Murtha

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With the recent raids on a Virginia lobbying firm and Pennsylvania contractors with close ties to Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), federal agents appear to be circling the powerful defense spending chief.

But if Murtha, as Republicans hope, is in the cross hairs for improper campaign donations, other House Democrats may soon find themselves in the feds’ sights, too.

The PMA Group, the defense-appropriations-focused lobbying shop that the FBI raided in November, in recent years has spread millions of dollars in campaign contributions to lawmakers, mostly House Democrats. And the firm has magnified that largess by helping to wrangle untold sums for those Members from its dozens of clients.

The firm’s money trail could prompt new ethics headaches for House Democrats already dealing with the problems facing Murtha and Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (N.Y.). Rangel is facing an ongoing ethics committee investigation into his personal finances and fundraising for a New York education center that bears his name.

Murtha has not been accused of any wrongdoing, and there is no indication that he is a target of a federal investigation. The Pennsylvania lawmaker’s spokesman Matthew Mazonkey said the Congressman “has not been contacted by any federal agency, and no one is suggesting that Jack Murtha has anything to do with this. Period.”

But Republicans hoping to seize the ethical high ground from Democrats are already salivating at the prospect that a key ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) may be in trouble.

“The signs that Rep. Murtha may be hiding serious ethical problems are clearer every day, but Speaker Pelosi continues turn a blind eye to the news about her hand-picked choice for House Majority Leader,” Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), said in a statement. “Despite their campaign promises, the Democratic Leadership is still more interested in sweeping ethics problems under a rug than ‘draining the swamp.’”

A senior House Democratic aide shot back: “Taking ethics advice from John Boehner with Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) and Don Young (R-Alaska) under federal investigation is like asking his advice about how to quit smoking.”

And while House Republicans made sure the news of the PMA raid was circulating Tuesday, House Democratic leadership was mostly mum. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), in response to a question about the raid, said Tuesday that the House ethics committee should “take under consideration any allegation that certainly is public and for that matter, any allegation that is privately made that bears substance.”

Murtha may be a top recipient of PMA funds, but employees of the Arlington, Va.-based shop have proved to be generous benefactors to a long list of lawmakers.

According to Federal Election Commission records, people identifying themselves as PMA employees have made just more than $2.7 million in campaign contributions since the beginning of 2001 — though about half of those donations have gone to the PMA corporate political action committee, which has in turn then doled money out to Members and other committees. The contributions mostly went to Democrats, though a handful of Republicans have benefited as well.

The total does not include thousands of dollars of contributions from family members who have not listed PMA as their employer. For instance, the FEC database includes about $70,000 in donations from a Jennifer Magliocchetti in Fairfax, Va. Some of these donations list her as a PMA employee, but others list her as a New York Yankees ticket sales agent and still others as a homemaker.

Even missing the full scope of PMA-related donations, it is easy to see a pattern in the firm’s contributions. The money tends to land in large chunks, particularly favoring Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee. And those lawmakers have frequently favored PMA clients with millions of dollars in earmarks.

In the spring of 2007, a new PAC created by the brother of Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) raised $50,000 almost entirely from PMA Group staff and clients, and within weeks, those same donors reaped millions of dollars in earmarks from Reyes and other Members closely affiliated with PMA.