On Monday, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) asked the House Ethics Committee to dismiss the pending case against her. In the meantime, the Ethics Committee announced that it has hired an outside counsel to pursue the case.
John Bresnahan reported on documents obtained by the Politico that Waters' attorney, Stanley Brand, say compromise the case. Late last year, former chief counsel of the Ethics Committee, Blake Chisam, advised then-Committee Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) that two lead attorneys in the case, Morgan Kim and Stacy Sovereign, provided confidential materials to Republicans on the Ethics Committee.
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NLPC has asked federal prosecutors to investigate the sale of a home by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), alleging that it was sold at an inflated price and that the purported buyers could not have qualified for a mortgage. The 2006 transaction was handled by an attorney named Alexander Kaplan, who was subsequently convicted of 18 counts of mortgage fraud and is currently serving a 46-month prison sentence.
It appears that four current members of the United States House of Representatives received loans via the VIP program of Countrywide Financial Corporation. Once again the motives of the former giant mortgage institution have been brought into question. Where they trying to peddle influence with these loans?
Yesterday, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years in prison for, among other things, attempting to "sell" the US Senate seat that was once held by President Barack Obama. Blagojevich's punishment comes on the heels of the U.S. House Ethics Committee's decision to continue its investigation into Congressman Jesse Jackson's role in the same scheme.
The New York Post today published 
On Friday, a federal grand jury in Brooklyn, New York indicted Edul Ahmad, a Guyanese businessman who was last month arrested in a $50 million mortgage-fraud scheme. Ahmad made an unsecured personal loan to Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) that was repaid only after Meeks' finances came under scrutiny by the FBI.
On August 5, the House Ethics Committee announced that it has accepted a recommendation by the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) to "further review an allegation that Representative (Gregory) Meeks failed to disclose a payment he received in 2007 in a timely manner."
On Friday, the FBI arrested Ed Ahmad, the Guyanese businessman who made an unsecured $40,000 loan to Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) that Meeks failed to publicly disclose as required. Ahmad was charged with mortgage fraud in connection to a wide-ranging scheme that involved faking income for applicants and the use of straw buyers. He was reportedly released on $2.5 million bail.
