McDermott pays $1.1 million (to Boehner) in tape case

[Newsjock]

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., has paid more than $1 million to House Minority Leader John Boehner, ending a decade-long dispute over an illegally taped telephone call.

McDermott paid $1,093,297 to the Ohio Republican's campaign committee earlier this month, spokesman for the two men said Monday.

... Boehner's spokesman, Kevin Smith, said the $1.09 million payment includes $628,000 from McDermott's campaign account and about $465,000 from McDermott's legal expense trust fund.

"Every last penny will be used to help elect Republicans," Smith said, calling it ironic that McDermott -- an outspoken partisan -- "is helping fund the defeat of his fellow Democrats.

... McDermott, for his part, was unbowed.

"While the amount of damages assessed in this case is significant," he said, "I submit that defending the First Amendment (freedom of speech and press) is beyond measure and worth every penny."

Read more: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/360957_mcdermott29.html

[OhioChick]

1. Makes one wonder

what was said on that phone call.

[Jim Lane]

15. No need to wonder. The phone call implicated Gingrich in ethics violations.

The House Ethics Committee had launched an investigation of Gingrich. He reached a settlement with the committee, as part of which he admitted to ethics violations and agreed not to coordinate with other Republican leaders in spinning the issue. In the phone conversation, Gingrich engaged in precisely that kind of coordination with Boehner and other Republican leaders.

[Ian David]

2. That buys a lot of Grecian Formula and spray-on bronzer. n/t

[Norrin Radd]

3. The crooks win yet again.

Doesn't matter. We'll donate the money back to McDermott.

[bahrbearian]

4. Was Bohner able to fight back the tears of hypocrisy..I mean joy.

[gateley]

5. McDermott has served the

people of Washington State and our country well.

One of the few willing to take a risk to get the truth out there, he gets punished and penalized.

Here's his site where you can donate a few bucks to help him with his legal fees if you're so inclined.

http://www.mcdermottlegaltrust.com/

I'd love to have him as our President.

[Festivito]

6. Our RW SCOTUS refused to hear it.

Imagine, letting the public know what the RW is does on a cell phone that a bumpkin Florida family can find on a scanner, and is perfectly admissible in court along as it would be recording a drug runner.

Why should we be free to know what our politicians are doing.

It should all be a secret.

Including our vote counting. &%$(--/sarcasm>

[KamaAina]

7. How much would 2,200,000 rolls of pennies weigh?

'Cause that's what I would've dumped on Boner's desk. :grr:

[yellowcanine]

13. Yeah I was thinking that would be appropriate also. Too bad he couldn't pay him in pig shit.

Unfortunately it is not legal tender.

[Seeking Serenity]

8. I am appalled at the support for McDermott on this issue.

It is so unprincipled, un-progressive. It saddens me.

Let us remember what happened here: An elderly couple happens to intercept a wireless communication between top Republican officials, and records the conversation (which they had no right to do). They give the recording to McDermott, who publishes it to the world. How anyone can defend this is beyond me. One cannot defend it for any principled reason.

What McDermott should have done is to thank the couple for their trying to help, but to admonish them that it is wrong to surreptitiously record the conversation of other people, and to have had the recording destroyed.

Switch the parties of all involved and ask yourself if you would honestly support the GOP congressman who released the recorded conversation of Democratic leaders. I strongly suspect, to the point of knowing categorically, that the reaction would the complete opposite. There would have been calls for the GOP congressman's censure, if not removal from office. You know it, and I know it.

The day that Boehner's conversations can be intercepted, recorded and published is the day that your conversation can be. You don't want it to happen to you? Don't let it happen to your opponent.

True progressivism has to be rooted in principle, not just rank partisan opportunism. That would be when we are no better than those we profess to be against. We will have met the enemy, and he will be us.

(edited to correct HTML formatting)

[Truth2Tell]

10. There is a substantial difference

between illegal recording of another person's conversation and the subsequent publication or disclosure of that conversation. My support for McDermott IS rooted in principle - the principle that disclosure of truth trumps almost all other factors.

A very compelling argument can be made that Boehner's statements in his private conversation were part and parcel of an illegal, immoral, anti-democratic conspiracy by high government officials. The fact that our corrupt judicial system failed to acknowledge that reality makes it no less true.

I should note that it's also possible to hold firmly principled positions and take principled actions that fall outside of American legal sanction. Even if I were to accept the contention that McDermott's actions violated the law (which I don't), I would still support them as a principled act of civil disobedience.

I applaud McDermott for his highly principled actions in this case. He is an American patriot and one of the very few men or women in our decrepit Congress who consistently vote and speak from a firm moral ground.

[Seeking Serenity]

11. Then you should not be heard to complain when the same actions

are taken against you or someone you politically support.

One cannot have it both ways.

[Truth2Tell]

12. Rest assured, you won't hear such a complaint from me.

If an illicitly recorded conversation of say, Dennis Kucinich, were to emerge in which he admitted to lies or actions against our democracy, I would support the publication of that conversation even if it's recording was illegal.

I should note that I would also support the punishment of the individuals who illicitly recorded the conversation (as I do in the case of the Boehner call).

I haven't seen anyone on DU asking to "have it both ways." I oppose hypocrisy as much as anyone, but I don't see any hypocrites here other than your straw man.

[eridani]

14. Fine--you hear someone plotting imminent murder on such a call--

--don't bother to contact the police.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

9. An account of the incident

is here: The War on Jim McDermott

The Republican legal crusade against McDermott has its roots in a 1996 ethics charge that bedeviled former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. At the time, McDermott was the ranking Democrat on the House ethics committee and Gingrich, the mastermind of the 1994 "Republican Revolution," which gave Republicans control of Congress for the first time in 40 years, was facing complaints over his use of a college course for political purposes. To settle the complaint, Gingrich agreed to pay a $300,000 fine and promised not to publicly minimize, or "spin," the charge against him.

"That was the genesis of this phone call," McDermott says, referring to a conference call that Gingrich held in secret with Republican leaders shortly after the settlement. "Essentially, he was encouraging them to figure out how to spin it," McDermott says—a direct violation of his agreement with the ethics committee.
....

Gingrich's secret conference call involved several members of the Republican House leadership, and as it happened, one of those leaders, Boehner, the congressman from Ohio, was driving through Florida at the very moment his colleagues needed him to be on the phone. So Boehner pulled into the parking lot of a Waffle House and joined the conference call on his cell. The date was December 21, 1996.