Yesterday, as Pete Sessions’ office was heroically trying to spin his “love” note to alleged Ponzi schemer Allen Stanford as an effort to “prevent further tragedy,” the Texas Republican, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, blasted out a fundraising appeal to his mailing list. As my colleague David Corn notes over at Politics Daily, the message, laced with harsh rhetoric, slammed “Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and their allies” for putting the country “on a dangerous path toward bankruptcy and strict government control.” He added: “Fortunately 2010 offers us a chance to hold the far left accountable and elect Representatives who will stand up for our American values in Congress.” The irony, of course, is that while Sessions was preaching accountability he was simultaneously working to avoid it—concocting a pretty weak excuse for why, on the same day the feds accused Stanford of perpetrating a multi-billion dollar swindle, he emailed the following note of encouragement to the disgraced financier: “I love you and believe in you. If you want my ear/voice — e-mail.” As the Miami Herald has reported, this message is now in the hands of federal investigators who are exploring whether congressional lawmakers, including Sessions, did favors for Stanford in exchange for campaign cash and other perks.
Also ensnared in this probe is Gregory Meeks, the New York Democrat, who, according to the Herald, appealed to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Stanford’s behalf. Here’s the backstory:
The president of his bank in Venezuela had turned on Stanford after being accused of stealing from the company, filing a lawsuit and publicly questioning whether Stanford was orchestrating a fraud.
Enraged at his former executive, Stanford placed a call in March 2006 to Democratic House member Gregory Meeks with a rare request: Go to President Hugo Chávez and seek a criminal investigation of Gonzalo Tirado.
Meeks, a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, agreed to carry the message, according to two former U.S. federal agents working for Stanford who were listening to the call on speakerphone.
The politician would travel to Venezuela a month later for a series of meetings with Chávez and other leaders. A year after that visit, Venezuelan prosecutors indicted Tirado on charges of swindling and tax-evasion.
According to the Daily News, Meeks “sometimes accompanied by his wife…took six trips to sun-drenched locales from Antigua to St. Lucia, courtesy of a Stanford nonprofit called the Inter-American Economic Council.” Since 2003, the organization spent more than $20,000 on the Meeks’ travel, putting them up in such lux accommodations as the Ritz Carleton in Montego Bay, Jamaica.
Meeks has yet to speak to these latest charges. If and when he does, don’t be too suprised if he has a creative excuse, à la Pete Sessions, for his close ties and suspicous interactions with the man accused of bilking investors of some $8 billion.
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