I think we will all look back at this and see it the singular event that stopped the Hunter train from locking up the nomination...
"...[edit] Cunningham/Wilkes Congressman Hunter has not been implicated in the Duke Cunningham/Brent Wilkes congressional bribery scandal. Although Hunter and Cunningham both served in Vietnam and as San Diego Congressmen, Hunter has never excused or condoned the actions of his friend. “Congressman Hunter does not condone Mr. Cunningham’s actions, nor has he tried to defend them…Congressman Hunter is a close friend of Mr. Cunningham’s, and friends don’t abandon each other during times of difficulty,” said Hunter spokesman Joe Kasper.
It has been suggested that Hunter had ties to ADCS and Brent Wilkes (who was indicted and charged with bribery of a public official in February 2007), but although Hunter and Cunningham were both advocates of the type of automated document conversion technology supplied by ADCS (which customized a German system), Hunter remained an advocate the American-made product of Tom Casey's Audre. Hunter asked the Pentagon’s chief purchasing officer to "whenever possible, use [document conversion] products that are made in the United States by American taxpayers." In 1992, Brent Wilkes was a political consultant for Audre Inc, a firm based in Rancho Bernardo and headed by Tom Casey, which specialized in automated document conversion systems. At that time, Congressman Hunter recognized Wilkes and Casey as two “aggressive and enthusiastic promoters of a breakthrough technology.” Congress created a program for the new technology, and Audre won $12.5 million of the $190 million that was allocated for contracts between 1993 and 2001.
In 1994, Brent Wilkes quit Audre and launched ADCS Inc., which customized a German document conversion system, to compete against Audre and two-dozen other software firms for government contracts. Hunter continued to back Audre’s American-made product. Wilkes and ADCS started donating money to Cunningham.
Between 1995 and 2005, Wilkes and his associates gave $71,500 to Cunningham's campaign and political action committee. ADCS, in turn, received upwards of $95 million in government contracts.
In November, 2005, Cunningham pleaded guilty to conspiracy, tax evasion, and receiving more than $2.4 million in bribes.
In February 2007, Wilkes was indicted and charged with bribery of a public official.
In December of 2005, Hunter directed that the contributions his campaign received from Wilkes and Wade be given to the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund. "We had options," said Bruce Young, treasurer for Hunter's re-election campaign. "We could keep the money, send it back, send it to the government or send it to a charity. We just felt that because of the situation, we would rather not have the money." More than 100 members of the House and Senate – Republicans and Democrats – accepted money from ADCS Inc. owner Brent Wilkes, former MZM Inc. president Mitchell Wade, their relatives, employees or political action committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign watchdog group..".