NYT: "Several Members" Under Investigation

By Paul Kiel - May 12, 2006, 12:39 AM

It's not just House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) who's under scrutiny:

Federal investigators are examining the activities of several members of the House Appropriations Committee, including Representative Jerry Lewis, the California Republican and chairman of the panel that wields influence over government spending, government officials said Thursday.

The officials said the inquiry was focused on the often-murky relationships among lobbyists, contractors and committee members, who are able to steer lucrative government contracts to favored vendors virtually free of outside oversight through a process known as earmarking....

The investigation is an expansion of the inquiry that began with the guilty plea of Randy Cunningham, a former Republican committee member from California....

...one of the contractors who paid bribes to Mr. Cunningham is Brent R. Wilkes, whose document processing company, A.D.C.S., won nearly $100 million in Pentagon contracts in part through the intervention of Mr. Cunningham.

The Appropriations Committee directed the Pentagon to award contracts to A.D.C.S., which stands for Automated Document Conversion Systems, even though the Pentagon did not request funds for the service.

One of Mr. Wilkes's lobbyists in Washington was Bill Lowery, a former congressman from San Diego who is close to Mr. Lewis.

That connection sparked the interest of government investigators, who are looking into Mr. Lowery's relationships with other members of the committee and his advocacy on behalf of dozens of clients with government business, government officials briefed on the case said.

House Appropriations Chairman Is Facing Federal Investigation

By Charles R. Babcock
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 12, 2006; Page A03

The Justice Department has begun investigating the activities of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, focusing in part on his dealings with a lobbying firm that hired some of his former staff members, sources familiar with the inquiry said.

One source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation, said subpoenas have been issued by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles.

Lewis said in a statement yesterday: "Neither I nor any of my staff have been contacted" by federal investigators. Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney, had no comment on the investigation, which was first reported in yesterday's editions of the Los Angeles Times.

Recent news accounts have outlined the close relationship between Lewis and former representative Bill Lowery, whose lobbying firm, Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White, specializes in seeking earmarks -- money set aside in legislation for specific projects.

John Scofield, a spokesman for Lewis, said that the chairman and Lowery, a former House member from a neighboring Southern California district, are "very good friends."

Two former Lewis staff aides have joined Lowery's lobbying firm in recent years. Last year, when Lewis became Appropriations chairman, one of them, Jeffrey S. Shockey, returned to become a top committee aide.

When he did so, he filed a financial disclosure report that showed he earned $1.5 million in 2004 as a lobbyist and was paid $600,000 last year in a separation agreement with Lowery's firm. Scofield said Shockey received ethics committee approval of the separation agreement.

Lowery did not return calls to his office yesterday.

The Lewis inquiry is at least tangentially connected to an ongoing congressional bribery case centered in San Diego and Washington, one source said. In that case, former representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) admitted he had accepted $2.4 million in bribes. Brent Wilkes, a San Diego defense contractor, is under investigation for allegedly bribing Cunningham.

Cunningham, a longtime colleague of Lewis's and, like him, a member of the Appropriations Committee, pleaded guilty and resigned in November. He was sentenced to more than eight years in prison. Wilkes has been identified as a co-conspirator in that case but has not been charged. Another contractor, Mitchell J. Wade, of Washington, pleaded guilty early this year for his role in bribing Cunningham.

In his statement yesterday, Lewis denounced Cunningham's behavior. Lewis said he had never told anyone seeking funding that they must hire a particular lobbying firm, and that he and his staff "never consider who the Washington representative is when reviewing project requests. I welcome a thorough review of these projects by anyone."