Speaker of the state House or Representatives Chris Donovan
is the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut 5th
District. His former campaign finance director Robert Braddock has been
arrested following a Grand Jury indictment on a series of charges involving
campaign finance money laundering.
During an arraignment proceeding on Thursday in federal
court in New Haven, charges were brought against other people involved with Mr.
Donovan’s U.S. Senate campaign, among them former Donovan campaign manager
Joshua Nassi, Paul Rogers, affiliated
with two roll-your-own tobacco shops in Waterbury, and union officials
associated with the Department of Corrections.
Mr. Donovan appears to be weathering this brutal
prosecutorial storm with a degree of calm indifference that has astonished some
reporters and commentators familiar with other political corruption cases in
Connecticut.
Leaders in the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Bailey,
beginning with Governor Dannel Malloy, the titular head of the state Democratic
Party, and including Mr. Donovan’s associates in the General Assembly, so far
have not been sufficiently stirred to appoint an informal delegation of
Democrat Party grown-ups to pay a visit to Mr. Donovan and suggest strongly
that he withdraw from his race for the sake of his party.
Even within the Democratic Party, some are wondering -- why
not?
There are two separate questions: 1) Was Mr. Donovan
involved in campaign money laundering? Answer: We don’t know, yet. And 2)
Should a politician whose campaign finance director – and now others -- arrested
for campaign financing illegalities be running for the U.S. Congress?
Somewhat like God, the FBI doesn’t play dice with the
universe; once they start a prosecution, it’s a pretty safe bet they’ve got the
goods or will get them by squeezing all the singing canaries that come their
way.
According to an FBI media release, birds in the cage now
include Benjamin Hogan, a.k.a. “Benny,” 33, of Southington, an employee of
Smoke House Tobacco, a Roll Your Own smoke shop with two locations in
Waterbury; David Moffa, a.k.a. “Moff” and “Buffalo,” 52, of Middlebury, the
former president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees (AFSCME), Local 387, representing employees of the Connecticut
Department of Correction; Daniel Monteiro, 33, of Wolcott, an owner of a
company located in Waterbury; Joshua Nassi, 34, of Fairfield [the former
campaign manager for Mr. Donovan’s congressional campaign]; Paul Rodgers, a.k.a. “Paulie,” 39, of
Watertown, a co-owner of Smoke House Tobacco, and George Tirado , 35, of
Waterbury, a co-owner of Smoke House Tobacco.
So far, eight people have been charged in the case, but the
FBI’s prize specimen may be Ray Soucy, a former state corrections employee and
Treasurer of AFSCME, Local 387.
On July 24, Mr. Soucy pleaded guilty on one count of concocting
a scheme to bribe a public official, one count of conspiring to make false
statements to the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”) and one count of impeding
the FEC’s enforcement of federal campaign finance laws.
While Mr. Donovan is not named in the FBI indictment, a
conversation cited in the document between Mr. Soucy and Josh Nassi, Mr.
Donovan’s former campaign manager, strongly suggests the Speaker may have been
in the loop.
When Mr. Souci asks Mr. Nassi if the candidate (Mr. Donovan)
was “good with this,” Mr. Nassi replies, “Yeah. I’m, you know, doing everything
I can … you gotta just monitor this s**t all the time.”
That answer would seem to imply that Mr. Donovan approved a
scheme to ferry illegal contributions into his campaign by means of proxy
contributors. It is difficult to put any other construction on this telling
conversation. In addition, Mr. Soucy may
have been wired when he spoke to Mr. Nassi and others, in which case the FBI
may have in its custody other incriminating conversation not noted in its
indictment.
Confronted several times by reporters in the course of his
now underfunded congressional campaign, Mr. Donovan has refused on the advice
of his council to discuss matters relating to the FBI’s investigation and
prosecution of his former employees.
Possibly, the grown-ups in the Democratic Party do not yet
feel that push has come to shove. If so, they are poor readers of the times.
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