The Jaws That Bite, the Claws That Snatch

Dan Roberti, a Democrat running for the U.S House in Connecticut’s 5th District has called upon Democratic Party nominee Chris Donovan to quit the race.

"It is time for Chris Donovan to withdraw from the primary race for the good of the Connecticut Democratic Party and to protect the seat,”Mr. Roberti said following an indictment returned by a Grand Jury of Mr. Donovan’s former campaign director Robert Braddock. “He has hidden behind lawyers and never stepped up to explain how members of his campaign staff could have arranged conduit contributions without his knowledge."

Following Mr. Roberti’s invitation to withdraw, Donovan campaign manager Tom Swan declared that Mr. Donovan remains, even after damning disclosures, the strongest Democrat in the race.

Mr. Donovan was nominated at the Democratic convention for the 5^th District seat now occupied by U.S. Representative Chris Murphy, the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate seat that will be vacated when present Senator Joe Lieberman leaves office.

"We have a clear path to victory in August and November," Mr. Swan said.

Formerly a union organizer, Mr. Donovan has received the backing of union groups in the state that also have announced their formal support of Mr. Murphy’s candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

Mr. Donovan was nominated by his party when the campaign financing scandal was a tiny cloud no bigger than a finger tip on the political horizon. Following the nomination, the cloud has grown to menacing proportions and now threatens to blot out the shining Democratic campaign sun. Since Dannel Malloy was wafted into office on a promise of shared sacrifice, Connecticut has become, for all practical political purposes, a one party state, and there is little doubt among campaign watchers and too clever by half Democratic Party operatives that voter inertia and political force majeure exerted by office holding Democrats will largely determine the outcome of the upcoming elections.

The published indictment of Mr. Braddock does not help Mr. Donovan’s campaign. In both an earlier affidavit and now in the indictment, Mr. Braddock has been accused of conspiring to accept conduit campaign contributions, illegal donations falsely made by one person in the name of another.

It is, however, the disquieting details included both in the affidavit supporting Mr. Braddock’s arrest and the recently released Grand Jury indictment that should cause Democrats in the state to contemplate getting together a delegation of politicos that might convince Mr. Donovan to take a bullet for his party.

According to the Braddock indictment, the roll your own scandal was a spin off investigation of an earlier federal probe concerning “the way federal money has been spent to remove lead paint from the homes of low-income families.” Federal investigators had discovered that one of the people who had signed an illegal conduit check for the Donovan campaign was connected with a business under investigation in the lead paint removal program. In investigations of this kind, one thing leads to another, and soon the best laid plans of mice and men are torn asunder.

The scorpion’s stings in the conduit campaign contribution scandal remain hidden. Mr. Braddock’s indictment, according to one report, suggest more shoes are to drop, “including the possibility that the FBI arranged to have union activist Ray Soucy wear a wire to record a conversation with Donovan at the Democratic State Convention about accepting illegal contributions in exchange for killing a piece of legislation related to ‘roll your own’ tobacco shops.”

Mr. Soucy – like Mr. Donovan before his election to the House, a good portion of which has been spent as a Speaker steering bills through the legislative sausage maker– was a union operative before he was caught up in the FBI investigation centering on members of Mr. Donavan’s campaign staff. It was Mr. Soucy – co-conspirator 1 (CC1) in the affidavit that secured his arrest – who coached two roll your own store owners under investigation for a meeting with Mr. Donovan by cautioning them not to mention pending bills relating to roll you own shops in Connecticut. Eyes and ears were everywhere, Mr. Soucy advised: “… there is always people following this guy around, watching what he's doing …" During their meeting inside a restaurant, the tobacco owners, Mr. Donovan’s arrested former finance director and Mr. Donovan discussed“various issues relating to the roll your own industry in Connecticut,"according to the Grand Jury indictment.

Was Mr. Soucy, already deeply implicated in the scandal, wired during conversations he might have had with Donovan? Were other co-conspirators wired when they conspired with Mr. Soucy? Is Mr. Soucy, under threat of prosecution, the only singing canary serenading prosecutors? Where are the scorpion stingers? What does the FBI know, and when did it know it?

Barring leaks from behind the thus far leak-proof barricades, answers to these questions may not be forthcoming before the election. Until such questions can be answered with some degree of certitude, those within the Democratic Party who owe Mr. Donovan their silence and a studied indifference to possible political repercussions will consider themselves safe from provocative criticism.

And later?

Later is for later. In a free country, professional politicians who winked at the damaging data in both the affidavit securing the arrest of Mr. Braddock and the Grand Jury indictment can always plead ignorance. And in the bluest state in the Northeast, the penalties assigned for willful ignorance are mild and survivable.

The Devil And Stan Twardy

The Devil, it is sometimes said, lies in the details.

The Devil did not show his hand in the Twardy investigation of Speaker of the House Chris Donovan’s tawdry campaign for the U.S. House in Connecticut’s 5^thDistrict.

Mr. Donovan’s former finance director was arrested by the FBI in a sting operation in which straw contributors, the FBI showed in an arrest affidavit, violated campaign finance regulations. FBI investigators almost certainly are squeezing some of the principals involved in Speakergate to obtain from them information their lawyers have denied to Mr. Twardy.

Virtually all Mr. Donovan’s Republican campaign opponents have said Mr. Donovan either did or did not know that his finance director, Robert Braddock, was, to put it kindly, delinquent in avoiding the near occasion of arrest. If Mr. Donovan knew about the financing irregularities that led to Mr. Braddock’s arrest, he was participating in corrupt activity; and if he did not know, he is not competent, most of his rivals say, to become a U.S. Representative. Mr. Donovan’s Democratic primary opponent, Dan Roberti, has similarly spanked Mr. Donovan.

There is no painless way to escape the perilous jaws of this Either-Or.Former U.S. Attorney Stanley Twardy's report on Mr. Donovan’s connection with his office is depressingly uninformative.

Mr. Twardy – sidestepping Will Rogers’ apothegm: “It’s not what you know that can hurt you; it’s what you doknow that ain’t so” – has presented Connecticut with a partial investigation. Many of the principals caught up in the FBI investigation refused on advice of council to be interviewed by Mr. Twardy, according to a Hartford Courant story. Any exculpatory conclusion drawn from unexamined facts is bound to be provisional.

The FBI’s investigation of Mr. Donovan’s political operations is certain to be more thorough. Even now, agents of the FBI or the State’s Attorney charged with prosecuting the case are squeezing principals whose lawyers have declined to speak to Mr. Twardy.

Mr. Donovan’s Republican opponent Mark Greenberg , who earlier called upon Mr. Donovan to drop his campaign and resign his Speaker position, issued a statement following Mr. Twardy’s media release that seems pertinent:

“By Mr. Twardy’s own admission, his report is incomplete and it leaves many questions unanswered. Much of the important relevant information was not forthcoming, and the investigation was hampered by the inability of Mr. Twardy to interview or receive documents from the principles in this scandal. People who commit crimes are not often reckless enough to leave a paper or email trail– the absence of such documentation is not surprising and accordingly, the“independent” investigation is certainly not conclusive. Unfortunately, the cloud of this campaign finance scandal will continue to hang over Donovan’s campaign until the federal investigation is concluded.

“Once again, I call on Chris Donovan to suspend his campaign for Congress. Nothing in the internal investigation diminishes the fact that the Speaker either knew or should have known of the illegal activity in his campaign. Whether it is a gross violation of the public trust or gross mismanagement, Chris Donovan is not an individual who should represent Connecticut in the United States Congress.”

The Donovan crisis is still unfolding.

Donovan, DeLuca And the Moral Obligations Of The General Assembly

Republican Senate Minority Leader John McKinney called upon Democratic Speaker of the House Chris Donovan to relinquish his position as Speaker following the arrest of his former finance chairman, Robert Braddock, for having concealed the identity of a donor, likely an FBI plant, who wanted to kill tax legislation on “roll your own” cigarette businesses in Connecticut.

Pointing to an affidavit used to secure the arrest of Mr. Braddock, Mr. Kinney said, “The facts and allegations in the affidavit are a grave violation of the public trust and cast a pall on all of the legislative activities Speaker Donovan has participated in since announcing his run for the U.S. Congress in the 5^th District,” a fairly damning assessment.

For his part, Mr. Donovan temporarily turned over the usufructs of his office to colleague Brendan Sharkey, who is expected to be appointed Speaker after Mr. Donovan’s term ends, and he has refused a call from one of his Democratic primary opponents, Dan Roberti, to step down as Speaker. After an exhilarating union rally in Hartford, Mr. Donovan pledged to carry forward his congressional campaign. Mr. Donovan’s defiance puts one in mind of former President Richard Nixon’s remark, even as Watergate was rising to his knees, that he was “not a crook.”

Two other Democratic congressional contenders vying for Senator Joe Lieberman’s soon to be vacant seat, former Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz and present U.S. Representative Chris Murphy, have made precious few comments concerning the arrest of Mr. Braddock and the possible political repercussions on Mr. Donovan’s bid for Mr. Murphy’s current seat. Mr. Donovan has refused, on the advice of his criminal lawyer, to answer any media questions that touch on Speakergate.

Governor Dannel Malloy nodded off after having called upon Mr. Donovan to make himself available for media interrogations; even God sometimes sleeps, thank God.

Mr. Malloy’s chief concern is to ensure the passage of the“roll your own” tax. After passing the tax increase to end all tax increases at the beginning of his term, the state budget – never in balance – once again is wading into the red, and more taxes are necessary to satisfy the ravenous appetite of the governor, the Democratic majority in the General Assembly and Mr. Malloy’s Malloyalists. Ben Barnes, the governor’s Office of Policy Management (OPM) chief, grows leaner and hungrier every day. The administration is depending upon Donovan factotum Brendan Sharkey, the Speaker’s handpicked replacement, to speed the plow during the upcoming special session, and he will not disappoint. Come Hell, high water or FBI investigations, Mr. Malloy will have his tax.

This is is not the first time the FBI had inflicted a sting operation on a member of the General Assembly. Only five years ago, Senator Lou DeLuca was forced to surrender his position in the General Assembly as leader of state Republicans after much ado about something was made concerning a domestic problem. While the Donovan mess has yet to mature, a comparison with the FBI sting operation that ensnared Mr. DeLuca is instructive.

An FBI agent, posing as a thug working for mob connected trash magnate James Galante, offered to“take care” of Mr. DeLuca’s son in law; in mob-speak, “take care of” and “bump off” are considered equivalent locutions. A Courant report at the time tells us: “On June 4, 2007, Senator DeLuca pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor threatening charge, received a suspended sentence, and was ordered to pay a fine. On June 12, 2007, DeLuca announced he would step down as leader of the Senate Republicans and was replaced by 28th District Senator John McKinney, son of late Congressman Stewart McKinney.”

Early in the DeLuca affair, Executive Director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG) Tom Swam urged the Senate to investigate Mr. DeLuca“to dispel public doubts and suspicions, according to a report in the Waterbury Republican American published on CCAG’s internet site. Mr. Swan, recently chosen by Mr. Donovan to replace his fired campaign director, had sensed a fatal hesitancy in the General Assembly: “I think there is a hesitancy to act." Mr. Swan wrote Senate President Donald E. Williams Jr. and Senate Minority Leader John McKinney asking them to appoint a bipartisan committee to look into the DeLuca affair.

Although Mr. DeLuca was yet under investigation by the FBI, the General Assembly began a hearing to nudge Mr. DeLuca from the Senate. The co-chairmen of the investigating committee were senators Martin Looney, now a Democratic Majority Leader, and Andrew Roraback, now the Republican Party nominee for the 5t5h District i8n the U.S. Congress. Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, tail spinning at the time into a full throated condemnation mode, made it plain that one of the purposes of the hearing would be to force the resignation of Mr. DeLuca:

“Because of Senator DeLuca’s unwillingness to do the right thing, Senate President Pro Tem Donald Williams and Senate Minority Leader John McKinney had no choice but to call for the formation of this committee. I applaud both Sen. Williams and McKinney for creating a bi-partisan process for dealing with misconduct of its members.

“It’s unfortunate that Sen. DeLuca is making a bad situation worse by not resigning now. His actions will hit taxpayers in the wallet and further erode public trust in government officials, just as the state is preparing for municipal elections. DeLuca’s actions only increase the distrust and disgust many people have for their government and that results in, among other things, low voter turnout.”

Then Representative Edith Prague added her voice and prestige to the crowd insistantly calling for the resignation of Mr. DeLuca. This writer was among the first columnists to call for Mr. DeLuca’s resignation. The integrity of the Senate was the chief concern of the now retired Mrs. Prague. Mr. DeLuca, she insisted, should be questioned on oath by the Senate investigating committee to insure, under threat of perjury, that the senator would tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth concerning his domestic affairs. The six member investigating committee, Mrs. Prague stressed, had been too patient with Mr. DeLuca:

“His resignation is absolutely required to maintain the integrity of the Senate. His testimony -- arguing whether it should be under oath or not under oath -- was absolutely outrageous. There should have been no question that his testimony and the questions and answers should be under oath. I was very upset watching that hearing, thinking what a mockery of the Senate and the bipartisan committee it was. ... I feel the committee is not being tough. Would he have that option in court? I don't think so. That man should resign from the Senate, and if he doesn't resign, we should expel him. If they don't vote to expel him, I will vote `no' on reprimand or censure.''

One cannot help but ask “Where is the sense of urgency in the Speakergate controversy?” Naturally, one would not expect a sense of urgency from Mr. Swan, who now finds himself on the staff of his old friend Mr. Donovan, but what of the other players in the General Assembly? Why has no one called for a hearing to investigate the corrupt and illegal activity swirling about the Speaker of the House?

Mrs. Prague’s strong moral voice is lost to the House now that she is no longer a member, but many of the other government officials who counseled Mr. DeLuca to leave office so that the honor of the General Assembly might be preserved are still walking the hallowed halls of the Capitol or running for re-election.

Is no one disturbed that a flaccid response from Democraticleaders in the General Assembly has anesthetized the moral outrage that should arise when a Speaker of the House is forced by an FBI inquiry to fire his arrested finance director, as well as aides identified in an affidavit as co-conspirators in a plot that besmirches the honor of the institution served by those who in the past rightly proceeded to call for a legislative hearing in a previous FBI investigation against Mr. DeLuca?

To be sure, it is important not to jump the gun. Mr. Donovan has not been advised that he is a target of an FBI investigation, the trip wire that did in the DeLuca case and should in very similar cases arouse the enmity of legislators concerned with the honor of the General Assembly.

Mr. McKinney has done well to call upon Mr. Donovan to surrender his position as Speaker. Others also have done so. Why has this seed fallen on such morally exhausted and parched ground?

While the FBI investigation is still in its larval stage, it is not too soon to demand that Mr. Donovan should leave his post as Speaker. Should Mr. Donovan decline to do so, the General Assembly is not without sanctions. The House especially might open a hearing so that members of the General Assembly may put questions to Mr. Donovan under oath – for precisely the reasons stated by Mrs. Prague. If under these circumstances Mr. Donavan’s lawyers advise him to avoid answering questions that may impact upon a possible criminal proceeding, he can avail himself of his Fifth Amendment right to decline to answer such questions on the grounds that any answer may incriminate him. For reasons that remain obscure, Mr. Donovan’s staff have brought dishonor upon every legislator in the General Assembly. The state legislature has a moral and institutional obligation to defend its own honor, and that defense, as was shown in the DeLuca case, need not wait upon the completion of the FBI’s case.

House Grills Donovan

“Embattled” is a word you do not want waltzing around with your name on the eve of a U.S. Congressional election. “Embattled 5th District Congress candidate Chris Donovan,” the Register Citizen reported, “in a taping of WFSB TV’s ‘Face the State’ Thursday, said he has no plans to quit the race even if his campaign’s troubles start to adversely affect other Democrats and party leaders urge him to leave.

Mr. Donovan is under scrutiny by the FBI for campaign financing irregularities. His campaign finance director, Robert Braddock, is under arrest for having conspired to hide the identity of certain donors allegedly involved in influence peddling; and other Donovan connected officials, two of whom are directly connected with his U.S. Senate campaign, have been named in an affidavit supporting the arrest of Mr. Braddock.

Thanks to some impressive digging and nagging by manyreporters, the influence peddlers –tagged anonymously in the affidavit as CC1, CC2 and CC3 -- have now been identified as: Ray Soucy, a labor union activist and a vigorous supporter of Mr. Donovan lately suspended from his position as a correction industries supervisor at Cheshire state prison (CC1); a former “roll your own” smoke shop worker in Waterbury (CC2); and Joshua Nassi, Mr. Donovan’s fired campaign manager (CC3).

As the story unfolded, an uppity Governor Dannell Malloy, who has managed to shove his finger in many political and judicial pies, at first called upon Mr. Dovovan to make himself available to Connecticut’s media for questioning, demanding in rather stern tones that Mr. Donovan give “a full explanation of what he knows." Eventually, the governor calmed down.

Mr. Donovan and all the co-conspirators promptly lawyered-up. Stan Twardy, best known for his service in the administration of former Governor Lowell Weicker, the father of Connecticut’s income tax, was hauled in to conduct an in-house examination of the tangled web in the House Speaker’s office. Mr. Donovan hired a criminal lawyer, who advised her client that he was to respond to every media inquiry concerning the FBI investigation by saying he did not intend to comment on such matters, except to say, as he did repeatedly during the interview with Mr. House, that he was innocent of wrongdoing.

Apparently content that Mr. Donovan had done everything possible to satisfy the curiosity of Connecticut’s media – the same persistent interrogators who had forced the resignation from office of former Republican state Senate leader Lou DeLuca in a previous FBI sting operation-- Mr. Malloy, once an empathetic prosecutor, took a nap, convinced that Mr. Donovan had sufficiently teffloned himself. If Mr. Donovan were to excite among senators and the media the same sense of outrage that nudged Mr. DeLuca from office, the General Assembly would be burbling at this moment with whispers of hearings and impeachment.

"He's met the test of dismissing the individuals,” the governor said of Mr. Donovan.“He has said he had no prior knowledge. He's come forward to speak to the public," Malloy said. "I think the rest of it is up to the speaker and the public” … And Mr. House, who found himself face to face on Face the State with a political armadillo.

When Mr. House noted that neither the governor nor U.S. Representative Chris Murphy, whose seat Mr. Donovan hoped to commandeer, had endorsed him, the Speaker replied that Mr. Malloy was drawn to his Democratic primary opponent Elizabeth Esty, whose husband Daniel is Mr. Malloy’s Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), and then he tossed Harry Truman at Mr. House: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”

Off in the distance, Leo Canty, one of the best know union operatives in the state, could be heard chanting, “There’s always people and events that will trip you up. This is just a slight trip in this race. … This is a hiccup and a glitch.” At an earlier union rally in Hartford, Mr. Donovan invoked the shade of Franklin Roosevelt.

“’I have my head held high. No one bought my involvement or my influence on any legislation, period,’ the embattled Speaker said. Touching on the controversy only in passing, Mr. Donovan said he wanted to talk about “fairness, dignity, respect. You take the first letter of each of them and what you get?-- ‘FDR.’”

Mr. Donovan boasted to Mr. House that he would win his primary against his two Democratic opponents, neither of whom is under investigation for possible influence peddling. When Mr. House gently prodded the Speaker, asking what would happen to his best laid plans should he be arrested, Mr. Donovan, according to Mr. House, “bristled.”

Frothing

The Donovan sting, now referred to by Tom Dudchik of Capitol Report as “Speakergate,” continues to froth.

CC-1 (Co-Conspirator 1), the FBI canary who helped to turn the tables on Robert Braddock, the former finance director of Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan’s U.S. House bid, has now been identified as Ray Soucy, a correctional industries supervisor at the Cheshire prison complex, according to a Hartford Courant story.

Just before Mr. Donovan was about to be pummeled over the weekend by Connecticut’s media, the Speaker, who has rejected calls that he quit the state House and terminate his campaign for the U.S. House in Connecticut’s 5th District, fired Mr. Braddock and hired Tom Swan, the director of the left of center Connecticut Citizen Action Group, to replace his former campaign manager, who was also fired.

Even as Mr. Swan stepped before the Media to say he had looked Mr. Donovan squarely in the eye and asked him point blank whether he was in any way connected with this sordid “Speakergate” business, the media in the crowd were growing restive.

Where was Donovan? Why do we have to endure this flack?

Mr. Swan assured everyone that Mr. Donovan was innocent and unblemished:

“I want to start off and say unequivocally, Chris did nothing wrong, and if I thought for one second there was a question about that, I wouldn’t be standing here today. I have a beautiful, 15-month-old daughter that I’d much rather be hanging out [with] than talking with all of you wonderful people here today.

“When I sat down with him, and I’ve known Chris for 18 years now and worked very closely with him, I looked him right in the eye and I said,‘Is there any truth to this and did you do anything wrong?’ And he looked me in the eye, and he said no. I agreed to take over this campaign because in my 18 years in this state, nobody has done more to clean up corruption and fight to protect democracy and working families than Chris Donovan.”

Mr. Swan said Mr. Donovan was sometimes disappointed, other times angry and more than anxious to get to the bottom of this mess –preferably, one supposes, before his campaign for the U.S. House disappears in a puff of media smoke. Surely, Mr. Donovan would not lie to his old friend Mr. Swan.

“In the fight of his political life, Chris Donovan blew what could be his last chance” one commentator wrote.“The House Speaker and 5th District Congressional candidate embroiled in an ugly campaign scandal should have stepped up to the podium Friday afternoon and declared that he had been betrayed by trusted staff members. He had a shining chance to declare not only did he know nothing about the money-for-influence scheme the FBI alleges his trusted aides were up to their necks in, but that he is outraged.”

Any lawyer – for a fee, of course – would be happy to explain why Mr. Donovan had rented out his tongue to Mr. Swan following the arrest of his campaign finance director on a charge that he had illegally concealed the source of funds pouring into Mr. Donovan’s campaign.

It’s like this: No one knows the full extent of what the FBI discovered in its investigation. And in the absence of such details, the published revelations in the affidavit used by an FBI plant to secure an arrest warrant for Mr. Braddock aside, anything Mr. Donovan says to the media may be held against him in a court of law.

It is only a matter of time before Mr. Swan trots out the tried and true media swerve in defense of his old friend: Mr. Donovan finds he is unable to respond personally to questions relating to “an ongoing investigation.”

One of the lawyers hovering about Mr. Donovan is former U.S. Attorney Stanley Twardy, hired by the Speaker to investigate all contributions to his campaign for Congress. Like Mr. Swan, Mr. Twardy is a battle scarred veteran of political campaigns, having served as chief of staff to Governor Lowell P. Weicker from January 1991 through February 1993. It will be recalled that then Governor Weicker forced his income tax through a somewhat tax shy legislature in 1991, heady times for Mr. Twardy. Presently Mr. Twardy is a Managing Partner of Day Pitney LLP and heads the firm’s White Collar Defense and Internal Investigations practice group.

If Mr. Twardy has not yet advised his client to button up until the discovery process has flushed out all the potentially incriminating evidence against him, if any, he is not earning his salary at Day Pitney. There is little reason to suppose that Mr. Donovan’s conscience will in coming days allow his valor to overcome his legal and political discretion.

However, a valorous General Assembly might well consider a congressional hearing to bring the facts of the case to light. There is no reason why multiple inquiries should not go forward at the same time. An investigation by Mr. Donovan’s peers may help in restoring Connecticut citizen’s shattered belief in “government’s ability to carry out its responsibilities,”Governor Malloy’s sorrowful expression when news first was brought to him concerning “Speakergate.”

Donovan, Still Kicking

It may be a little early to bury the corpse, though moments after the finance director for state House Speaker Chris Donovan’s congressional campaign, Robert Braddock Jr., was arrested and charged with hiding contributions of about $20,000, Governor Dannel Malloy, a former prosecutor with a soft spot in his heart for multiple murderers, threw a spade full of dirt over the quivering body.

Said Mr. Malloy in a press release:

“I want to commend the US Attorney’s Office and the FBI for their diligence in the investigation and the speed in which they’ve taken action. Law enforcement is in many ways the first and last line of defense for our taxpayers, and when an announcement like this happens, we should all be grateful for their work.

“These allegations are despicable. While I am encouraged that the Speaker is cooperating with the investigation, his position requires that he give our residents a full explanation of what he knows.

“Allegations like this not only damage a campaign or a candidate, they also undermine citizen’s belief in their government’s ability to carry out its responsibilities.”

According to an affidavit written and sworn to by the FBI agent who facilitated the arrest of Mr. Braddock, the finance director ran afoul of a campaign financing statute that makes it illegal for a campaign to conceal the source of campaign funds. It is a violation of federal campaign finance law for any person to knowingly accept a contribution made by one person in another’s name. Mr. Braddock is alleged to have accepted roughly $20,000 from an investor in the tobacco industry, thereafter laundering the money as multiple campaign checks given to the Donovan for Congress campaign by dummy donors. The investor was an FBI plant who, for purposes of this column, we shall call Mr. Sting. The names in the affidavit, thinly disguised, have been changed to protect the case against Mr. Donovan’s finance director.

Were it not for the state’s insatiable thirst for more tax money to plug a hole in Connecticut’s budget, consistently in arrears, Mr. Donovan’s path to the U.S. House need not have been cluttered by unseemly charges in FBI affidavits.

To goose more tax dollars from tobacco connected businesses, the Democratic dominated legislature passed a bill months ago levying a tax on roll-your-own tobacco shops, the well having run dry after Mr. Malloy and the Democrats passed the largest tax increase in state history. On behalf of state Revenue Services Commissioner Kevin Sullivan, Attorney General George Jepsen sought an injunction against Tracey’s Smoke Shop and Tobacco LLC for the illegal manufacture of cigarettes at its stores in Norwalk and Orange.

In February, a Superior Court ruled that the shops were not tobacco manufacturers and therefore not taxable entities under the relevant law. This judgment was little more than an inconvenience to Democratic legislators, and state tax officials promptly sought to overcome the judicial impediment though the creation of yet another bill that would allow them accesses to the tobacco shops’ piggy banks. The new bill opened the door to aggressive lobbying. But, alas, the bill died at the end of the last session.

Increasingly in politics, bills that ought never to have been passed are used as instruments to generate campaign funds for politicians who, through excessive taxation and burdensome regulations, are able to obtain from government rent seekers transfers of campaign cash into their own coffers in return for political favors. In this game of thrones, everyone wins but taxpayers.

In the short time since Mr. Braddock was arrested, two newspapers have called upon Mr. Donovan to make himself available for questions. Good luck with that. One paper has urged Mr. Donovan to quit the General Assembly, and most Democratic legislators connected in any way with the now toxic bill that would pile additional taxes on roll-your-own tobacco shops have assumed defensive crouches. Mr. Donovan has announced he has turned over to Brendan Sharkey, a House member in line for the Speaker’s post, his responsibilities as Speaker, at the same time announcing he does not intend to withdraw his candidacy for the U.S. House.

Mr. Malloy has pronounced the “allegations” in the affidavit used to secure Mr. Braddock arrest “despicable.” It is, of course, not the allegations that are despicable, but rather the tax and regulatory environment that opens a hundred doors to political corruption. The crony capitalist is the natural ally of the corruptible money grubbing politician. Politicians and their staffs rush into temptations of this kind much in the way a young boy with two stomachs rushes into the candy store. Hell itself will freeze over before despicable money seeking politicians condemn equally despicable quasi-socialist, faux capitalist rent seekers.