Pombo defends himself over reports on FDIC probe, Abramoff case

ap on Bakersfield Californian ^ | 1/9/06 | Erica Werner - ap

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo said Monday he and other congressmen weren't attempting to block a federal investigation of a prominent Texas political contributor, but were trying instead to keep a government agency from wrongly seizing the man's property.

At issue were attempts by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to recover $300 million from Houston millionaire Charles Hurwitz for his role in the 1988 collapse of United Savings Association of Texas, which cost taxpayers $1.6 billion.

A report in Sunday's Los Angeles Times said Pombo, R-Calif.; Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif.; and Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, sought to stop the case.

DeLay denounced the investigation in a letter to the FDIC chairman in 1999. Pombo and Doolittle subpoenaed the agency's records on the case and in 2001 inserted some of the documents into the Congressional Record where they were accessible to Hurwitz's lawyers.

Soon after the FDIC dropped its case against Hurwitz, a generous donor to DeLay who also gave some $7,000 to Doolittle and $1,000 to Pombo's 1996 re-election campaign.

Pombo, a strong property-rights advocate, said he and other lawmakers got involved because the Clinton-era FDIC was trying to get Hurwitz to settle his debt by selling the government forest land and trees his company, Pacific Lumber, owned in Northern California.

"The government wanted this guy's land and they didn't want to pay for it, and they were going to get it one way or the other," Pombo said on a conference call with reporters. "This is a classic property rights case where you had the government coming in and trying to take someone's property."

FDIC spokesman David Barr disagreed.

"The FDIC has been on the record ever since the beginning of this that our case against Mr. Hurwitz had nothing at all to do with the trees. It was about recouping as much money as we could for the taxpayers who lost $1.6 billion when his S&L failed," Barr said. He said the tree-swap idea was Hurwitz's to begin with.

Hurwitz countersued the government over the investigation and to recover attorney's fees, and a district court judge in Houston ruled in his favor last summer. The FDIC is appealing.

The report on the Hurwitz case comes as the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal has focused attention on lawmakers taking official actions that appear to benefit contributors. Also Monday Pombo defended his efforts to help a Massachusetts Indian tribe that was represented by Abramoff's lobbying firm gain federal recognition.

The Mashpee Wampanoag, which now appear to be nearing recognition, donated at least $20,000 to Pombo after he held a 2003 meeting with Interior Department officials, according to the Times.

Pombo said Monday that he introduced legislation that would direct the government to give the Mashpee and other tribes an answer on their recognition bids but that didn't require the government to grant recognition.

"I do not believe that anyone should have to wait 30 years to get a yes or no answer from their federal government," Pombo said.

Abramoff pleaded guilty last week to federal conspiracy, tax evasion and mail fraud charges and admitted conspiring to defraud Indian tribes, which he sometimes directed to make contributions to lawmakers. He has agreed to tell the FBI about alleged bribes to as many as 20 members of Congress and aides.

The FBI has collected records from the Mashpee tribe related to Abramoff. According to the Times, Pombo has attracted investigators' attention through his work on behalf of the tribe.

Pombo said Monday he has not been contacted by prosecutors in the Abramoff case and has no reason to believe he is a target of their investigation. Pombo has donated to charity $7,000 in campaign money he got from Abramoff, but said Monday he intends to keep tens of thousands more he got from tribes Abramoff represented.

"Nothing I did in trying to run the Resources Committee in any way was ever influenced by anything that came from Mr. Abramoff or anything like that," Pombo said.

[Torie]

You might put Pombo on the list, maybe likely GOP, but it won't take much for it to deteriorate fast. Dumping documents into the record to thwart an investigation is pretty ugly. Pombo's district is somewhat marginal. Bush carried it by 8.5%.

[gov_bean_ counter]

Never mind that Clinton's pulled the plug on the bank fraud investigaton of Harold Ford, Sr. Jr. got to keep the money.

[CharlesWayneCT]

But given that a federal judge found in favor of paying the defendant's lawyer, that is a pretty good sign the FDIC had a poor case.

[Torie]

Maybe, but it seems some Congressmen interfered in a legal proceeding for reasons that seem to have a certain noisome aspect.