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For PMA, Was Influence a Family Affair?

March 12, 2009 11:42 AM

Why would an assistant ticket director for the minor league Tampa Yankees baseball team give over $70,000 in political contributions?  How about $216,000 from a police sergeant and his schoolteacher wife?

It’s unknown –- and they’re not talking.  But it’s worthwhile to note, as Congressional Quarterly does today, that they’re all relatives of lobbyist Paul Magliocchetti.

Magliocchetti built his firm, PMA Group, into one of the most influential operations in Washington in part by funnelling hundreds of thousands of dollars into campaign coffers.  He's now reportedly the subject of a federal investigation into campaign contributions.

The sheer size of his relatives’ largesse is likely to have federal investigators wondering if Magliocchetti or his firm didn’t reimburse the relatives for their contributions, says a prominent D.C. ethics lawyer.  (Don't miss CQ's cool chart!)

“When you have people whose salary or other income doesn’t match the level of giving, that’s obviously going to set off alarm bells,” said Andrew Herman, a partner at the Brand Law Group.

The Magliocchetti family may have been one of the most generous benefactors to Capitol Hill that few have ever heard of: records list over $1.5 million in donations connected to Magliocchetti’s clan since 2000, according to CQ.

Inquiries to family members did not garner a response.  A spokesman for Magliocchetti and PMA declined to comment.

PMA's specialty was winning hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarked funds for its clients, mostly from the Pentagon's budget.  As CQ notes, Magliocchetti's relatives gave heavily to the House members who controlled that very spending.

This post has been revised.

March 12, 2009 in PMA | Permalink | Share | User Comments (1)

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Posted by: david | Mar 12, 2009 11:58:59 AM

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