From the front page of Roll Call:
The FBI has raided the Northern Virginia home of Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.), according to Congressional sources. No details are publicly available yet about the circumstances of the raid, but Doolittle and his wife, Julie, have been under federal investigation for their ties to the scandal surrounding imprisoned former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker notes:
Remember that a former key aide to Doolittle, Kevin Ring, who’d worked with Abramoff, resigned suddenly from his job late last week. As I wrote before, that’s a clear sign that Ring may be preparing to plead guilty and implicate Doolittle.
Stay tuned…
(UPDATE: ThinkProgress has much, much more.)
Race Tracker: CA-04
Doolittle is one of the creepiest of Republicans. In 2006 he is the candidate who smeared Democratic opponent Charlie BROWN as being the pedophile’s best friend based on his support of the ACLU. The ACLU once defended a pedophile whose rights were egregiously abriged and that was the casual link the Doolittle campaign pressented in linking Brown to pedophiles. Doolittle like many on the far right has no shame.
The sooner John Doolitte retires, the better. But it would be preferable if he and his wife were sent to the federal penitentiary where betrayers of the public trust belong.
doolittle’s wife isn’t named Lucy by any chance is she?
That doesn’t wrap up too early. A little Bill Jefferson-style defiance on Doolittle’s part would be helpful, too. Otherwise we could have another Duke Cunningham situation on our hands. (Remember, Busby had run against the Dukestir in 2004 as well.)
Check it out here. And AZ-1 is an even more winnable seat for us. R+2, and Renzi had a closer call than anyone was expecting last time.
Also:
Democrats in Arizona and Washington have raised questions about whether the investigation into Renzi was connected to the ouster of the state’s former U.S. attorney, Paul Charlton, who was forced to resign last December as part of a controversial purge of federal prosecutors.