The Swamp
RNC's Steele: 'Want to clear good name'

by Paul West

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said today that he
will provide records from his 2006 Maryland Senate campaign to the
Federal Bureau of Investigation in an effort to speed an apparent
federal investigation into allegations of improper campaign spending.

Steele confirmed that his sister was recently contacted by FBI agents
looking into allegations that his campaign paid a company she owned more
than $37,000 in 2007 for campaign work that was never performed. The
allegations were made by Steele's former campaign finance chairman in an
unsuccessful attempt to gain a more lenient prison sentence after his
fraud conviction in an unrelated case.

In his first public comments on the issue, Steele described the transfer
of records to the FBI as voluntary.

"I'm not going to wait for them to come to me. I'm going to take it to
them and give them everything that they think they need. And if that's
not enough, we'll give them more," Steele told ABC's "This Week" in an
interview scheduled before the allegations became public.

Steele repeated denials issued by his spokesman earlier in the weekend
in response to news reports, first detailed by the Washington Post.

"It's all false," Steele said. "We're being very proactive about this
because I'm sick and tired of this 'gotcha' business that the Washington
Post and others in the media attempt to engage in."

Steele expressed frustration that the allegations had surfaced barely a
week after his election as the first African-American chairman of the
Republican National Committee. In that position, he is responsible for
raising and spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

"I want to clear up my good name. This is not the way I intend to run
the RNC, with this over my head. We're going to dispense with it
immediately," he said.

See the rest of the report on the RNC's Steele at the Baltimore Sun and
here in the Swamp:

The U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore has refused to comment on
whether Steele or his sister, Monica Turner of Potomac, Md., are under
investigation. However, a spokeswoman has confirmed that a document
outlining the allegations against Steele was unintentionally provided to
a Post reporter.

Last March, Alan B. Fabian, who had been finance chairman of Steele's
2006 campaign in Maryland, made the allegations in an unsuccessful
effort to get a reduced sentence for his part in a $40 million fraud scheme.

Steele said Fabian's inability to cut a deal with prosecutors showed
there was "no credibility" to the allegations. But Fabian's defense
lawyer, in the sentencing document, claimed that Fabian got no credit
for cooperating with prosecutors "presumably because its investigation
is ongoing."

Steele said that $37,000 paid to a company owned by his sister was "a
legitimate reimbursement of expenses." The payment, for "catering and
web services," was made in December, 2007, more than 11 months after his
sister folded the company.

"At the time when the checks were written back to her to reimburse her,
she just said, 'Go ahead and write the checks to the company,' because
the company had, you know, done the services that were provided," said
Steele, an attorney who practiced corporate law during the 1990s. "There
are many companies out there that dissolve and still receive payment for
services that are rendered, and so forth."

Among the unanswered questions surrounding the incident is why an
investigation into Steele's finances might have become more active at
about the same time that his political career was getting a huge boost
with his election to head the RNC.

The former lieutenant governor said federal agents recently contacted
his sister "for purposes of closing out this matter. . . . The FBI is
now in the position of winding this thing" up.

Steele contended that "if there were any funny business" involved with
his 2006 Senate campaign it would have been caught by other federal
agencies before now. He said he has not been contacted personally by the
FBI.


Posted by Mark Silva on February 8, 2009 5:30 PM

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If Steele weren't such a horse's ass, he'd hold elective office. Good
speaker, strong physical presence, smart. But he's a real conservative jerk.