Posted on 03/01/2006 10:12:05 PM PST by NormsRevenge
The contracts former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham browbeat the Defense Department into awarding two contractors who showered him with money and gifts were not in the nation's interest, according to documents filed by prosecutors yesterday.
Instead, the prosecutors said, “Cunningham and his co-conspirators fleeced the people of the United States to the tune of millions of dollars, earning profit margins on some contracts in excess of 800 percent.”
In pleading guilty in November, Cunningham admitted taking more than $2.4 million in bribes in return for steering those contracts to two defense contractors, but he insisted the contracts were for legitimate defense needs.
However, in a blistering rebuttal filed in San Diego federal court, prosecutors said the claims were “a transparent attempt to whitewash Cunningham's criminal conduct.”
The U.S. Attorney's Office said “the evidence indicates that Cunningham's motivation was to ensure that his co-conspirators gorged themselves at the national trough regardless of the national interest.”
The prosecutors said Cunningham enthusiastically conspired with defense contractors who complied with his escalating demands for cash, furniture, trips and other bribes.
They are requesting that Cunningham receive the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. The papers are part of a final push by lawyers on both sides to set up their arguments for Friday's sentencing by Judge Larry Alan Burns.
The papers also provide the most detailed description so far of Cunningham's corruption. Prosecutors cited graphic examples of how Cunningham browbeat, threatened and intimidated Pentagon officials and his own staff so that millions of dollars went into the pockets of the contractors.
In return, Cunningham demanded and received the bribes for which he has pleaded guilty, resigned from Congress, lost his Rancho Santa Fe home and faces the prospect of dying behind bars.
“The government's filing continues to establish nothing more than what Mr. Cunningham already admitted publicly three months ago,” defense lawyer K. Lee Blalack said in response. “The question before the court is whether punishment should be tempered with mercy.”
Defense lawyers are asking for a six-year sentence. They said the 64-year-old Vietnam war hero's health problems and long military and political career merit leniency.
Cunningham, in a letter to the judge two weeks ago, said his corruption “started very slowly and innocently.”
He said he stood behind the products and services provided by contractors Brent Wilkes of Poway and Mitchell Wade of Washington, D.C.
“My staff – and sometimes even I – sought the assurances of officials at the Department of Defense that they supported these programs and the funding that these subcontractors requested,” he wrote.
“I convinced myself that I wasn't selling my good offices because I have always believed in the value of the programs that I supported.”
Prosecutors Sanjay Bhandari, Jason Forge and Phillip Halpern said the facts contradict Cunningham's position.
They said Cunningham rejected concerns and objections raised by government officials and “bullied and hectored” them over red flags they raised about the legitimacy of the programs.
“At every stage of the funding process Cunningham set aside the judgment of (Department of Defense) officials about what was in the best interests of our country, in favor of what was in the best interests of his co-conspirators,” they said.
“To fund one initiative usually means cutting funding for another. Thus Cunningham lobbied to take funds away from other programs to ensure more money for his co-conspirators.”
Included in the prosecutors' documents are e-mails by members of Cunningham's Washington staff, testimony by Pentagon officials and a letter written on Cunningham's congressional stationery – and under Cunningham's signature – by Wade. Also included is a script Wilkes gave the legislator on how to talk a skeptical Pentagon official into moving funds into his company's programs.
Cunningham, referred by his staff members as “the big chinchilla” in an e-mail, had a notorious angry streak when funding for the contractors who underwrote his lavish lifestyle was threatened.
When negotiations with other members of the powerful spending committee on which the Republican served put his programs at risk of being reduced, one staff member wrote another: “I am under my desk ducking and covering.”
Pentagon officials told investigators that he tried to have one of them fired and went over their heads when they questioned the contracts.
As sentencing approaches, defense lawyers said last week that Cunningham, who has battled prostate cancer and other ailments, should get a chance to spend his final days with his family.
In the papers they filed yesterday, prosecutors said Cunningham has already gotten a break by pleading guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion charges that carry a maximum 10-year sentence.
Had he gone to trial and been convicted instead of agreeing to plead guilty, he could be facing decades in prison, they said.
The acts to which he admitted could have resulted in bribery, money laundering and fraud charges carrying a possible 30-year sentence, far beyond Cunningham's life expectancy, they said.
Cunningham's downfall began after Wade's tainted purchase of Cunningham's Del Mar-area house was disclosed in a Copley News Service story published June 12 in The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Wade bought Cunningham's house for $1.675 million in November 2003 and then sold it eight months later at a $700,000 loss.
In 2004, shortly after Cunningham bought his Rancho Santa Fe mansion with proceeds from the sale of the Del Mar-area house, he asked Wilkes for $525,000 to pay off one of the mortgages.
Wilkes agreed, but asked for a $6 million contract, which he got over the objections of a Pentagon contracting officer.
The off-the-shelf computer equipment provided in that contract cost Wilkes $1.5 million to purchase, prosecutors said, netting an exorbitant profit.
10 years isn't good enough--for either of them.
I couldn't agree more. Hang 'em out to dry!
Man, did this guy go off the deep end. Threw his whole life, family, friends and reputation away. I hope it was worth it to him. Sad.
I'm still sickened over Duke's actions. How monumentally foolish of him! Ten years is what he should do.
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