I'm still filling in for absent H-L editorial board colleagues, but an opinionated old so-and-so such as me can't keep quiet when something as interesting as the latest news from the FBI investigation of the Transportation Cabinet comes along. So, a few initial thoughts on the subject:
The affidavit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in London by FBI Special Agent Clay Mason confirmed a rumor members of the media had been hearing for at least a couple of months - that former Transportation Cabinet official James Rummage had admitted taking $20,000 from highway contractor Leonard Lawson in exchange for supplying Lawson with engineers' estimates for road projects. The same rumor had Rummage, who was known to be cooperating with the investigation, implicating former cabinet Secretary Bill Nighbert in the scheme. For once, a juicy rumor turned out to be true.
Mason's affidavit says he started investigating the cabinet in July 2007 but the information about Rummage didn't surface until after the November election. That information "shifted the focus" of the FBI investigation, according to the affidavit. So, what was being investigated before the change of focus? Well, former cabinet official Sam Beverage's allegations about corruption in the Fletcher administration, including using road projects as rewards for political favors, became public in late June 2007 as part of a plea deal he made to get a perjury charge reduced to official misconduct. Whether that was indeed the impetus for launching the FBI investigation, the timing coincides.
My colleagues who have covered federal probes such as this one say it is at least a bit unusual for a document such as Mason's affidavit to become a matter of public record at this stage of an investigation. That begs the question: What do prosecutors and the FBI hope to achieve by getting such juicy details out in the open now?
Another question raised by the disclosures is this: What excuse will Fletcherites come up with to rationalize this latest scandal? "Partisan political witch hunt" won't cut it this time, not when the U.S. attorney was appointed by a Republican president.
Larry Dale Keeling, a columnist for the Lexington Herald-Leader, has spent most of his 35-plus years in journalism reporting on or writing editorials and columns about Kentucky’s politics and political issues. He now brings his experience and expertise on those topics to the KyKurmudgeon blog.
Was Sam Beverage or Dan Druen or Bill Nighbert or even David Williams ever really Fletcherites ldk?
Dan Druen certainly was a true believer, until the other Fletcherites tried to make him the scapegoat. And Nighbert continued to be a Fletcherite throughout the administration. Williams was never a true believer, and I don’t know about Beverage.
ldk
Dan Druen was a Mitch boy always. Isn’t he now back working in a funeral parlor? Maybe Mitch knows where his little buddy is now.