Not letting go

That pain-in-the-neck blogger Jeff Eager, who broke the news of Senator Ron Wyden's staff's apparent involvement in the shady crypto guy's $500,000 contribution of stolen funds to the state Democratic Party, isn't buying Wyden's flack's declarations of innocence. In fact, Eager flat-out accuses Wyden of lying about the caper, here. Eager also concludes that old Ron broke federal election law, too.

It's too bad Wyden is so untouchable. What he and his crew do on an ongoing basis seems as sleazy as Shemia Fagan's expense account, and on a much grander scale. But you won't see the local media giving him much of a hard time. Heck, they don't even ask to see his tax returns.

Speaking of the sketchy crypto contribution, it's getting on time to pay the piper. Since the state party has no cash lying around, some big shot blue politicians' campaigns have pledged to hand a half-million bucks over to federal authorities, basically admitting that it was stolen money. So far, the only trace of that repayment I can find on the public record is Tina Kotek's campaign forking over a cool $100,000 to the state party on June 9. I assume that that moolah's headed for the federal Justice Department, although the party hasn't reported such an expenditure yet. 

Federal officeholders don't have to report their campaign money doings until the end of the quarter. The reports for this quarter aren't due until two weeks from Monday. It will be interesting to see how much Wyden gives up to go with Kotek's 100 grand toward the 500. And which of the Democratic House members are going to pungle up how much.

As for the line that Wyden's people weren't involved in the contribution – they were just "in the loop," whatever that means – Eager gives us plenty of, ahem, food for thought. 

And it's not just Wyden's involvement we should be thinking about, although that's the most amusing part. All of these different campaign accounts are tied together in some sort of secret network that nobody wants to talk about on the record. It sounds like the Mafia, actually. If private businesses behaved this way, somebody would go to prison.