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Dick Morris, Breaking Big Stories. Fred Thompson, Playing the Dirty Money Game

Mother Jones loves exposing the Washington game wherein lobbyist children work with their lawmaker parents, a game that results in a shocking (shocking!!) rate of success for the lobbyists and lots of money spread around for all involved.

Today, with an assist with Dick Morris, we bring you a consultant son working with his presidential candidate father, with, oh yes, lots of dirty money...

What did Fred Thompson's son, Daniel, do to earn the more than $170,000 that his firm, Daniel Thompson Associates, was paid from his father's federal political action committee, the Fred D. Thompson PAC?
The records suggest he did next to nothing.

Undeclared candidate (I love that phrase) Thompson has been running a PAC since 2003 with the leftover money from his senatorial campaign committee. He began the PAC with $378,601 and did nothing with the organization except give that money away. Of the payouts, $176,000 went to Thompson's son's firm, $46,000 went to federal races, $35,000 went to "other political donations," and $62,700 went to charity. Meaning over half of the PAC's payments have gone to Fred Thompson's son. One might even say this was a conscious effort to enrich a family member: a scam, in short.

Evidence of that theory lies in the fact that, as Morris writes, "it's hard to find any evidence of bona fide work done by Daniel Thompson Associates for his father's PAC." Thompson's PAC didn't do anything that would require a consultant, except maybe write checks. Or find people to write checks to, a service that would hardly require a payout of almost $180,000.

Thompson is from an earlier era of congressional Republicans — let's call them the pre-2006 era Republicans. They played fast and loose with ethics rules and campaign donations, and got slammed by voters as a result. It's no surprise that the presidential frontrunners for the GOP are a mayor, a governor, and the strongest supporter of campaign finance reform in the country. Do they really want to add a dirty money man to that list?

Posted by Jonathan Stein on 07/24/07 at 9:36 AM | E-mail | Print | Digg | de.licio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Yahoo! MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Netscape | Google |



Comments

Dick Morris?...Big News?
Now that is comical. this has been broadcasted for weeks now!...just shows how insignificant Morris is

Posted by: Big Jer on 07/24/07 at 11:08 AM

Doesn't make a difference when it was broadcast -- what Thompson has been doing was wrong several weeks ago and it is wrong now.

Thompson is nothing but a DC insider who plays the same lack of ethics games being played for years on both sides. We do not need a lobbyist as the President. Cannot even imagine how the WH would be for sale.

Time for someone fresh in the WH and no more of the same group behind a candidate that have been affecting GOP races for years.

Posted by: Samantha on 07/24/07 at 11:18 AM

I don't think we really want to compare this to slick willy and queen hillary do we??? Like Big Jer said, this has been floated for weeks!!!! No one cares!!! Sick of the gotcha mentality. Try to talk of an actual real world issue!

Posted by: Jeff on 07/24/07 at 12:26 PM

If this is all the left wingers can dig up on Thompson, I would be shaking in my boots if I were a Democrat.

Thompson is as close to squeaky clean as a politician can get. At this point the libs are going to have to make up stories about Fred and pray the public believes.

Ofcourse, we all know the libs wouldn't do that don't we?? :)

Posted by: Nat on 07/24/07 at 12:36 PM

Samantha, you can't imagine how the WH would be for sale? We saw 8 years of it with the first clinton, and I bet you would vote for teh second clinton to get in there and sell it also.

Posted by: TB on 07/24/07 at 12:50 PM

Well, let's all just vote for Mike Gravel, then? Yes?

Anderson Cooper: Mr. Gravel, what do you think about...

Mike Gravel: Follow the moneeeeeeeeey! The MONEY!!!

AC: Um, Mr. Gravel...

MG (quivering with indignation): The moneeeeeeeeey! Follow the MONEY!!!

(cue fade away, Gravel is carted off into obscurity)

It would take a miracle or a revolution because, well, an election won't get an anti-plutocratic president elected (even one who isn't seemingly coming unglued on national TV).

Posted by: Mike on 07/24/07 at 1:10 PM

Well Daniel Thompson - didn't work for the Clinton or Trent Lott. So I would say his judgements better than Mr Morris. So Daddy Thompson hired his son to handle the money and paid him less than what a Washington firm would charge for the same amount of work. Getting to the point was it illegal? NO.

Posted by: Memmie on 07/24/07 at 2:34 PM

No wonder Fred married Jeri. Both of them are willing to grind for cash.

Posted by: FRaud Thompson on 07/24/07 at 3:32 PM

"Squeaky clean" Dick Morris has the audacity to cast stones? Absolutely nothing he says or writes has any veracity or documentation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Morris

Posted by: betsy on 07/25/07 at 4:43 AM

Um, Nat?

Thompson's first campaign manager was a tobacco company lobbyist.

Thompson's pro-life, and he did lobbying work for pro-abortion groups.

Now he's paying off his son out of his PAC.

Dude, this is what has come out before the negative research on this guy has even started.

If you're interested in starting with the issues, want to see what this guy's record is like?

http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/Fred_Thompson.htm

Posted by: Michael Heister on 07/25/07 at 1:38 PM

"Thompson is as close to squeaky clean as a politician can get", according to Nat, that is. Oh, really?

Does that include the times when on the Watergate Committee, Thompson passed on to the president the information the committee was going to use against him--in effect, to be a mole for the person he was supposed to be investigating, instead of exercising his sworn-to-uphold official duties?

Didn't he admit that in his own book, and doesn't that make him a self-admitted traitor of sorts, at least to his own constituents?

Do you supposed they will even notice?

I see only a few honest dedicated candidates from either of the two major parties, and according to all indications they don't have a chance in the primaries.

The only way forward is a new third party movement, the intent of which is to make irrelevant the traditional two-party system.

The work-in-progress of forming such a party can be seen at http://neitherparty.blogspot.com/2007/07/progressive-democratic-republican.html and www.neitherparty.org where your active participation and (hopefully financial) support is sought and needed.

The alternative to the above plan is the present-day destructive and destabilizing status-quo.

Regards,,,John
( john_rice@neitherparty.org )

Posted by: John Rice on 07/25/07 at 1:57 PM

Excuse me?? The Gotcha mentality of the Dems? The Republicans are THE WORST at paying attention to actual real issues. They are so light on the issues they'll pull anything out of the hat to change the conversation. If anything the Dems learned to fight dirty from the Republican Roves. The Republicans are so corrupt and such hypocrites when it comes to family values ppfffshhh! they need to keep there finger pointing to a minimum since records can pull up more dirt, greed, fraud, lies etc on every GOP 10 times over then the Dems.

Posted by: truthsayer on 07/25/07 at 2:45 PM

I really wish people would THINK before they use terms like
"pro-life". One poster wrote:

Thompson's pro-life, and he did lobbying work for pro-abortion groups.

Very confusing! There is really no such thing as "pro-life". That's THEIR term for their desperate need to control a woman's body -- up till she gives birth; after that, who cares about the baby's health and development.

People should use the more descriptive term "anti-abortion" or better still "anti-choice".

PLEASE folks, think about this! Why play THEIR vile game?

Posted by: Higgs Boson on 07/25/07 at 4:03 PM

What? None of you know who Ron Paul is? Now there is what squeaky cleanj is made of. That guy votes for Nothing if it is not constitutional. He is spotless. Check him out. OHH, the reason you dont know he is running is because they dont want you to.

Posted by: justin_o_guy on 07/25/07 at 5:38 PM

Why is it whenever these righties are exposed as crooks, there is the inevitable "well, Clinton blah, blah, blah..."? Children, children, children, as long as you continue to fight amongst yourselves, the crooks running this country are gonna keep right on screwing you-your petty posturing makes it soooooo easy for the Demlicans & Repubocrats to cheat you out of your hard-earned do-re-mi...what a sweet deal for them.

Posted by: William on 07/25/07 at 9:20 PM

"Squeaky Clean" always follows the cleric's rule of thumb that has persisted since the times of Jesus: the church is in your face when it comes to personal misconduct and doctrine and is missing in action when it comes to institutional corruption and public deceit. A politician who uses false association and false premises to deliberately mislead the public on issues will absolutely draw no criticism from religious leaders. They didn't in Jesus' day, the rise of Hitler, the crusades, the inquisition, the Drug War or the War on Terror. However, if someone cheats on their spouse or hires a hooker, all Hades will break loose.

Posted by: JT Barrie on 07/26/07 at 7:53 AM

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