Friday, November 13, 2009
Cold cash, hard time
Ex-congressman William Jefferson (D-LA) is going to jail for a long time.
A former Louisiana congressman who famously hid $90,000 cash in his freezer was sentenced Friday to 13 years in prison for taking bribes, the longest term ever imposed on a congressman for bribery charges.Congratulations to AP for not making us play "name that party," and for putting Jefferson's sentence in context further down in the piece, mentioning Duke Cunningham's (R-CA) 8 years, Bob Ney's (R-OH) 2.5 years and Jim Traficant's (D-OH) 7 years.
William Jefferson, a Democrat who represented parts of New Orleans for nearly 20 years, was convicted in August of taking roughly $500,000 in bribes and seeking millions more in exchange for using his influence to broker business deals in Africa.
4 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Nov 14, 04:16:00 AM:
Meh. One wonders how many more years he will manage to serve in Congress before seeing even a highly-shruken-down bit of that sentence?
~Otter
By , at
Sat Nov 14, 10:40:00 AM:
I'm wondering if Jefferson's relatives and close staff members still have enough clout in the Congressional Black Caucus to raise enough cash to buy a pardon from Holder on the last day of Obama's term? That would be about January 20, 2013; about a three year sentence for Jefferson. Hey, Holder did it for Marc Rich and Clinton signed it. All we are talking about here is whether Jefferson can come up with enough cash.
By , at
Sat Nov 14, 01:48:00 PM:
When will we know C. Rangell's term?Hopefully it will set a new record.
By 
Georg Felis, at
Sat Nov 14, 06:28:00 PM:
Hm, lets see. Free pending hearing. Appealing. Half mil in forfeit bribes being contested by wife. (So if I steal money, I should quickly give it to my wife, so it cannot be taken back?) 62 years old. Give him about two years worth of appeals, a years worth of minimum security, and a outgoing pardon by Obama, and he's good to run for a couple more terms.
And if he had not lost his election, he would *still* be in the House, with the rest of his Peers.
