Bribes and Intimidation on Capitol Hill

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October 17, 2006 4:55 PM

Disgraced former Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham pressured and intimidated House staffers to get his associates government contracts, according to a congressional investigation.

Cunningham resigned from the House last year and pled guilty to accepting more than $2 million in bribes from defense contractors.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hired a Special Counsel to investigate whether any staffers or committee resources were involved in the scheme; ranking member Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) released the results today.

The report finds that Cunningham used his committee membership to help obtain approximately $70 million to $80 million in funding for two contractors who paid him bribes.

And it says a "key to the success" of those appropriations was Cunningham's "willingness to pressure and intimidate individual...staff members."

The report says some committee staffers received "gifts of 'government trinkets' such as a carpet emblazoned with the words, 'Global War on Terror,' from a friend of one of the contractors. 

But the investigation found no evidence that any staffer profited or sought to profit from any of Cunningham's funding requests.

The Republican chairman of the committee, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), said the report was not yet final and that its release by Democrats was politically motivated.

Cunningham, a Republican from California, is serving an eight-year sentence in federal prison.

Read the Executive Summary of the Report.