Well this sucks. It looks like everyone's favorite Democrat will be indicted.
Dark side of a colourful congressman
PORK barrel politics and the spirit of Tamany Hall are alive and well on Capitol Hill.
James A Traficant, a Democrat congressman from Ohio, is about to be indicted for racketeering and corruption by a grand jury, just as the Republican party is about to reward him for his support with a position on a key committee.
Aside from regular allegations about corruption, the congressman from Youngstown has become famous for a birds-nest hairstyle straight out of the 1970s and his similarly dated bright polyester suits.
His speeches are incendiary, populist and often funny, always ending with the Star Trek phrase "Beam me up Scotty". Republicans started courting him well before last year’s election, aware that the gadfly in him might turn into a crucial vote they could use down the line.
While talk of a deal with his new Republican friends is hotly denied, Traficant was able to deliver $25m in government funds to build a massive new sports arena in his economically ravaged constituency, a coup that helped him win re-election.
To the anger of his fellow Democrats, Traficant then voted for the Republican Dennis Hastert as Speaker, which given the narrowness of the Republican majority could have been crucial.
But the love-in could soon be over. A federal grand jury is hearing allegations of bribery and deep corruption against Traficant exposing what are claimed to be his strong connections with the Mafia mobsters who virtually run that depressed part of Ohio.
What is doubly extraordinary is that this is not the first time Traficant has faced prosecution for taking Mafia bribes.
In 1983, while sheriff of Youngstown, he was put on trial after the FBI produced supposedly damning evidence of his Mob connections, including lengthy tape-recorded conversations with local don Charlie ‘The Crab’ Carabbia that should have landed him in prison for years. Better yet for the prosecution, Traficant had even signed a confession.
But come the trial, he recanted the confession and proceeded to defend himself. He gave a bravura performance, strutting around the court in a bright pink shirt and torn green trousers, raging against his tormentors and littering his performance with obscenities. He painted himself as the victim of the overbearing FBI which he said had muscled in on his sting operation and then betrayed him.
The jury lapped it up, acquitting him after four days of deliberation, and turning him into a local hero overnight. A year later he was elected to Congress.
The story might have ended there, with the FBI frustrated, the Mafia still in control of Ohio’s Mahoning Valley and James Traficant a colourful figure on the Washington political scene for as long as he kept the folks back home happy with supplies of government money and entertaining speeches.
But it started to unravel in 1996, when the people of the Mahoning Valley did something completely contrary to their past record - they elected an irreproachably honest man as district attorney.
Paul Gains so frightened the Mob that the local capo, Lenny Strollo, ordered a hit on him. His chief lieutenant, Bernard ‘Bernie the Jew’ Altshuler, put together a hit team and on Christmas Eve went after Gains. The gunmen were spectacularly and unusually incompetent.
Gains lived and soon the FBI was amassing a pile of evidence, pulling in increasingly senior members of Strollo’s organisation, including Charles Nesti, Traficant’s senior aide, who pleaded guilty to running bribes between Strollo and Youngstown public officials.
Two other close aides and friends of Traficant were caught in the net, as was Strollo himself, who turned state’s evidence. Early last year, Traficant felt the noose tightening around his own neck.
"Hawks are circling, buzzards are circling, sharks are circling," he told a bewildered Congress last March. "Twenty years ago - not quite - I was the only American in the history of the United States to defeat the Justice Department. They have targeted me ever since. They better not make a damn mistake. I’m going to fight like a junk yard dog in the face of a hurricane."
Given the secrecy surrounding grand jury investigations, no one was quite sure what to make of a statement that bore all the hallmarks of paranoid delusion.
But once the election was over it became clear the investigators had indeed been building their case against Traficant. They had subpoenaed a wealth of documents and phone records from him and people who did business with him.
It was confirmed last week that he is expected to be indicted again soon.
Once again he fully intends to conduct his own defence against "the hypocrite bastards" whose specific charges are expected to include bribery, extortion, racketeering and tax offences.
In Washington’s Alice in Wonderland world, where politics long ago lost any resemblance to reality, such impending legal catastrophe seems to have done nothing to weaken the Republicans’ embrace of Jim Traficant, and no one is prepared as yet to predict how that will play out.
For Traficant, Armageddon approaches. He gave an interview on National Public Radio last week to start laying the foundations for the upcoming defence of his job and his reputation.
When questions got too inquisitive for comfort, the rough diamond turned plain rough.
"Get the fuck out of here now, you piss me off," he told the interviewer, who dutifully played the tape on air. "The interview is over, you understand me?"
If the FBI has its way, that’s not all that will be over for Congressman Traficant.
By Nick Peters in Washington
Sunday, 18th February 2001
Scotland on Sunday
scotlandonsunday.com |
