Corruption in Corrupticut

Not all corruption is equal.

In a recent column, “A Kennedy Stirs Connecticut's Politics,” Kevin Rennie sideswiped departing Republican leader Larry Cafero, who is to the Republican Party what Rocky Marciano was to boxing, a hard slugger:

“Cafero got snagged in a 2012 federal investigation into campaign contributions and legislation. He was caught on video as an informant deposited $5,000 in cash into a refrigerator in Cafero's office. The money was converted into campaign contributions from straw donors, and the scheme was revealed last year during the criminal trial of a campaign aide to former Speaker of the House Christopher Donovan.

“What a mess Cafero leaves in his wake. His gelatinous, silent deputies, Reps. Themis Klarides and Vincent Candelora, have disgraced themselves beyond repair for failing to take a stand for honor during this long fiasco. They will wear Cafero's deep stains for however long they remain in public life.”

And the sins of the political father shall be visited upon the heads of his political children – yea, even to the tenth generation: “… gelatinous, silent deputies… have disgraced themselves beyond repair… They will wear Cafero’s deep stains for however long they remain in public life.”

And the stain that has dishonored Cafero and his gelatinous deputies is … what exactly?

An “informant,” Ray Soucy, tapped by the FBI as a singing canary, deposited an envelope containing $5,000 in cash “into a refrigerator in Cafero’s office.” Apparently – though we may never know for certain – Mr. Soucy was given the cash by the FBI and told – though we may never know for certain – to make use of it to incriminate Mr. Cafero. Mr. Soucy had earlier used money provided to him to incriminate several associates of then Speaker of the House Chris Donovan. The net cast over the troubled waters by the FBI snagged a few Donovan operatives, but the big fish, Mr. Donovan, got away. Mr. Donovan’s campaign for the 5^th District seat in the U.S. House collapsed in ruins under the hammer blows of the FBI investigation.

The attempt to ensnare Mr. Cafero failed when the Republican leader in the General Assembly noticed Mr. Soucy stuffing the cash in the refrigerator and rejected the FBI bagman’s fraudulent cash donation.

Speculation may and usually does run wild at this point. Did Mr. Cafero know when the cash was being stuffed in the fridge that Mr. Soucy was an FBI plant? Probably not, because following Refrigeratorgate, Mr. Cafero did accept from Mr. Soucy tainted donations in the form of checks that he apparently did not know were tainted. The FBI later would advise Mr. Cafero he was not a target of their investigation. Mr. Soucy, the FBI plant, was successful in delivering tainted campaign funds to several of Mr. Donovan’s associates, some of whom were convicted and sentenced to prison. But Mr. Donovan, his campaign for the U.S. House in tatters, escaped the prison noose. The play of events suggests – though, of course, we may never know for certain – that the sting operation, at some point, may have been compromised. In any case, the Big Fishes wriggled free, and the FBI was satisfied with smaller fry. None of Mr. Cafero’s gelatinous associates were arrested, very possibly because neither Reps. Themis Klarides nor Vincent Candelora had accepted tainted campaign donations.

Never-the-less, the two targets of Mr. Rennie’s outrage, Ms. Klarides and Mr. Candelora, are not merely gelatinous; they “have disgraced themselves beyond repair; they are dishonorable; they will “wear Cafero's deep stains for however long they remain in public life.”

So says Connecticut’s equivalent of Nathanial Hawthorne’s the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne’s godly pastor in the Scarlet Letter. The Reverend Dimmesdale was a secret sinner always in good odor with his flock:

'People say,' said another, 'that, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to his heart that such a scandal has come upon his congregation."

In any partisan commentary that has pretentions to non-partisanship, fairness equates to equal flailing. If you whip a Republican who richly deserves the whipping – say, a felonious governor – you must find a Democrat to whip, so that the pans of your justice scale will be evenly balanced. If you whip a Democratic Speaker of the House, you must find on the Republican side someone equally odious you must flail. And the weight of the accusation must appear to be equivalent – even when the justice pans bear different weights.

There is no indication – NONE – that Ms. Klarides deserves the letter “A” Mr. Rennie has pinned upon her. Mr. Cafero’s honor was not damaged by an FBI canary whose cash campaign contribution he rejected, as politely as possible. The sting operation is as old as Adam and Eve: The serpent in the garden is God’s advocate sent upon the earth, like the FBI, to seek the ruin of men’s souls. Sometimes the satanic advocate, the tester of men, succeeds, sometimes not.

Both Mr. Donovan and Mr. Cafero rejected the overtures of the FBI’s satanic advocate, Mr. Soucy, once a union leader in Connecticut’s prison system. Because Mr. Soucy  had co-operated with the FBI, he avoided jail time. Donovangate should put Mr.  Rennie in mind of a remark made by Bill Buckley following a failed 1957 coup plot against Indonesian strongman Sukarno: "The attempted assassination of Sukarno last week,” Mr. Buckley wrote in National Review, “had all the earmarks of a CIA operation. Everyone in the room was killed except Sukarno."

Measured by the number of top dogs upon whom the shadow of the prison fell, the Donovan sting operation was far from successful. Perhaps Mr. Rennie will devote one of his columns to explaining why and then demand that the General Assembly create an Inspector General Office to examine and prosecute future cases of corruption in Connecticut, the state that regulates everything but itself.

Soucy, Plunkitt And The Dovonan Sting Operation

The FBI’s singing canary in the Donovan probe, “labor activist” Ray Soucy, was not given prison time for the part he had played in the attempted corruption of former Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan.

The lede on a story in a Hartford paper ran as follows:

“A labor activist at the center of an attempt two years ago to kill a tax on tobacco by bribing a top state lawmaker with tens of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign money was sentenced Monday to three years probation, the first six months to be served at a halfway house.”

Connecticut’s majority Democratic Party is full of “labor activists.” It’s only a slight stretch to say Governor Dannel Malloy, who has marched on the picket line with union workers, is himself a “labor activist.” Mr. Malloy pledged his troth to unions when he was in the political nursery, and he has renewed his vows several times during his administration, most notably when his first budget was on the drawing boards.

However, few labor activists are as colorful as Mr. Soucy, Connecticut’s equivalent of George Washington Plunkitt, a Tammany Hall boss in New York City who ran his political operation from a bootblack stand. Mr. Plunkitt – “I seen my opportunities, and I took’em”  – was on his way out even before he was interviewed several times by reporter William Riordan, who later stitched together his embarrassingly frank interviews in a small book, “Plunkitt of Tammany Hall.”  Mr. Plunkitt claimed he was a casualty of the then new civil service system, the bane and ruination of political parties. Mr. Plunkitt’s Democratic Party, it may be noticed, has since adapted to the new reality and now counts unions and civil service workers as the I-joist of the Democratic Party.

The FBI wired Mr.  Soucy and provided him with a script with which he might ensnare the people – some young, others inexperienced in the ways of political lifers -- who surrounded Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan, then running for a U.S. Congressional seat left vacant by Chris Murphy, now a U.S. Senator.  The rancid odor issuing from the FBI sting operation persuaded Mr. Donovan to withdraw his Congressional bid in favor of Democrat Elizabeth Esty. The small-fry were easily ensnared. At some point during the FBI sting operation, the cover was blown – when and by whom we may never know – and most of the incumbent big fish, with some effort, swam upstream.

Hauling in the net, the Feds successfully prosecuted Mr. Donovan’s campaign manager, lower level campaign workers, and some benighted smoke shop owners drawn into the sting by George Washington Plunkitt Soucy, who teased fraudulent campaign donations from them by explaining that money made the wheels go round at the state Capitol. Or, as Mr. Soucy colorfully put it, “Politics is about the Benjamins. [Ben Franklin’s mug is on the highly inflated hundred dollar bill] This game runs on one thing -- dollars."

Other Soucyisms:

 "Chris Murphy will do anything in the (expletive deleted) world for me because he remembers that I was the first one to believe in and invest in him. That's how the system works."

After Mr. Soucy tells a wired FBI informant, Patrick Castagna, that he has been sowing the political ground in $10,000 increments, Mr. Castagna, the FBI straight man, doubts whether $10,000 is sufficient to buy a Connecticut politician. Inflation, after all, has taken a bite out of the purchasing power of the dollar.

Says Soucy, “The $10,000 was to let him know you are serious....We're dealing with politicians. We're not dealing with the mob [pause]. It's a close second."

“Pictures [the Benjamins again] they're worth a thousand words. The guy running in the 5th District [former House Speaker Chris Donovan] he got 10 pictures [a $10,000 campaign contribution].”

When all the dirt was flushed down the drain, “the guy running in the 5^th District” gave up his campaign, and the FBI, thanks to the wired Soucy, managed to send a few Donovan subalterns to prison. But not Soucy the singing canary. The well connected union leader, now on probation, will spend six months in a half-way house because, according to one report,
“Soucy [sic] recordings and his help in raising and delivering about $28,000 in cash were instrumental in the indictments of two Donovan campaign officers and five roll-your-own owners or employees.”

The guys who got the Benjamins were inconvenienced but emerged unscathed from the FBI sting.

Mr. Plunkitt tells us why:

“Understand, I ain’t defendin‘ politicians of today who steal. The politician who steals is worse than a thief. He is a fool. With the grand opportunities all around for the man with a political pull, there’s no excuse for stealin’ a cent. The point I want to make is that if there is some stealin‘ in politics, it don’t mean that the politicians of 1905 are, as a class, worse than them of 1835. It just means that the old-timers had nothin’ to steal, while the politicians now are surrounded by all kinds of temptations and some of them naturally—the fool ones—buck up against the penal code.”

Roll Your Own Taxpayer

The Chris Donovan, “Roll Your Own” scandal is being judicially tucked to bed now that some principals in the scandal have been sentenced.  Most recently, Joshua Nassi, former state House Speaker Chris Donovan’s campaign manager, was sentenced to 28 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton.

Mr. Donovan was running for the U.S. House in Connecticut’s 5^th District when his campaign was rudely interrupted by FBI wired singing canaries, prominent among them former corrections union official Ray Soucy, a character who might have done well for himself during the good old days of Tammany Hall and George Washington Plunkitt, the Tammany Hall boss who always was careful to make a sharp distinction between honest and dishonest graft.

Connecticut’s Roll Your Own tobacco shops seriously undermined the state’s effort to reduce smoking by making tobacco prohibitively expensive through punitive taxation. The Roll Your Own product could not have been punitively taxed unless the General Assembly designated such shops as “tobacco manufacturers.” Slapping that designation upon an operation in which cigarette purchasers used a machine to roll their own cigarettes was, as Mark Twain might have said, a bit of a stretcher.

Right from the start, however, the political stars were aligned against the Roll Your Own Tobacco shops, which were springing up like poisoned mushrooms all over the state. And, unforgivably, these mushrooms were not subject to the same exorbitant tax levied on Big Tobacco.

While the tobacco tax is the state’s most egregious example of punitive taxation, Connecticut’s tax on gasoline – the environmentally bad stuff people put in their cars so they might get to work and pay more taxes – is the highest in the nation. The gas tax is actually two taxes: a tax paid at the pump and a gross receipts tax, hidden from purchasers, levied when the product arrives in port, both of which were supposed to be sequestered in a special fund for road maintenance. The so called road maintenance tax has long since been dumped into the state’s General Fund. Some voices in the state’s Democratic dominated General Assembly lately have been raised to resurrect tolls to pay for much needed road and bridge maintenance.

Always starving for tax receipts to pay for a budget that has increased threefold since former Governor Lowell Weicker and Democrats in the General Assembly imposed an income tax on the state, a bill was put forward in the General Assembly to designate Roll Your Own tobacco shops as “tobacco manufacturers.” So designated, the Roll Your Own shops would be subject to the same exorbitant and punitive taxes levied on Big Tobacco. This is the bill that became the snare that caught Mr. Nassi and others in its iron and unforgiving jaws.

Punitive taxes are always imposed under a flag of concern and compassion. Smoking is bad for your health, and it increases the cost of health care. Why should people who are not addicted to smoking pay higher insurance premiums because smokers choose to pollute their lungs? Who would mind paying exorbitant taxes on gasoline, if they could be certain the taxes would be dedicated to road and bridge repairs? Cars that do not depend on gasoline are more environmentally friendly, and high gasoline taxes are a way of driving up the cost of gas guzzling cars so that future purchasers would be more inclined to “invest in” more environmentally friendly modes of transportation. Better still, these tax dollars can be used to make necessary “investments” in public transportation such as the New Britain to Hartford fast-track bus line.

Such is the irresistible zeitgeist in Connecticut: What fool could possibly object to high taxes if it can be shown that the taxes are used for benevolent purposes by a prudent and compassionate state? Taxpayers in Connecticut should know their public officials will use such punishing taxes wisely. The benefits of high taxes far outweigh the disadvantages of high taxes. Any idiot can see that. And any idiot can see that low tax Roll Your Own smoke shops kicked against the pricks

What? A low tax tobacco product in Connecticut?  You gotta be kidding me. Why, everyone knows that low tax products drive from the market high tax products. And they rob tax resources from a benevolent Peter who is robbing taxpayers to pay Paul. Why, dear me, think of the collapse of benevolence that would occur if state government were deprived of tax resources.  Just to begin with, Governor Dannel Malloy would not be able to supply dwindling tax resources to multimillion dollar Connecticut based companies in order to bribe the companies to remain in Connecticut and refrain from moving operations to low tax, low regulatory states. In a low tax, low regulatory environment, tax consumers would have to do more with less. Where would we be then?

Low tax Roll Your Own smoke shops fell to this remorseless logic. They were doomed from the beginning. It only took a slight nudge and a little canary-wiring from the FBI to topple them over the edge.   

Democrats Call for Unity

Speaker of the state House Chris Donovan should have received by Monday a call from John Olsen, President of the AFL-CIO, beseeching the Democratic nominee for the U.S. House in the 5^th District to withdraw from the race.

Not a few members of Mr. Donovan’s campaign staff have been arrested by the FBI; other of Mr. Donovan’s political associates are even now being wrestled to the ground by FBI agents and prosecutors intent on uncovering what they know and when they knew it about  fraudulent campaign contributions.

The Silence of the Lambs

Speaker of the state House or Representatives Chris Donovan is the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut 5^th 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.

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.

Soucy’s Song

"It's not what you know that hurts you, It's what you know that ain't so" -- Will Rogers

At this point in the FBI Donovan “sting” operation, what is not known is paramount – including whether the operation was a sting operation. Stories involving corrupt politicians have reporters and editors reaching for their adjectives: “In an apparentsting operation…”

In order to persuade a judge to issue a warrant for arrest, those seeking the arrest – in this case, FBI agents – must first present an affidavit containing information that certainly would be of interest to news editors and commentators. The assertions made in affidavits contain certifiable information on the basis of which an arrest is made, and these assertions, partly edited, soon find their way into news stories. The affidavit information may or may not be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth For the purpose of launching an initial story, it is presumed to be reliable by many reporters and editors.

Consider the identity of CC1, noted in the affidavit securing the arrest of fired finance director Robert Braddock, part of whose business it was to haul in contributions for the 5^th District U.S.House campaign of present Speaker of the State House of Representatives Chris Donovan. Co-Conspirator 1 is not identified by name in the affidavit, nor are CC2 or CC3, identified as Co-Conspirators 2 and 3 in the affidavit.

In the news business, information flows into a story, once it finds its way into print, from a variety of sources, some more reliable than others. Then too, reporters and editors are supremely conscious of “changes in the force” when a major tremor such as the firing of a finance director shakes the political universe. The name of CC1, still unconfirmed by the FBI, surfaced following a) the appearance of the initial story, b) the identification of CC1 by reliable sources as Ray Soucy, a correction officer and labor union official politically active in Democratic Party politics, and c) the decoupling of Mr. Soucy from his union responsibilities.

The union official who showed Mr. Soucy the door did so because he had become a possible witness in a possible criminal case that involved his participation in corrupt activity.

In the FBI affidavit, Mr. Soucy is the proverbial cooperative co-conspirator; which is to say, he is cooperating with the FBI investigation by serving as a plant in the putative (note the adjective) “sting” (note the quote marks) operation. Someone prompted Mr. Soucy to ask compromising questions of Mr. Braddock, which are then recorded for use in an FBI affidavit, certainly seems to be a “singing canary” in a“sting” operation. Here, of course, we bump into Will Rogers’ admonition.

What prompted the canary’s song? Was it an injured conscience? A sudden resolution to rout all campaign contributors who play fast and loose with campaign financing law? Or was the canary’s participation in the possible sting operation necessitated by a threat of prosecution? At this moment, we don’t know it’s so, and we don’t know it ain’t so. But if it lives in a cage and eats FBI seeds and sings like a canary, it’s probably a canary.

What initially prompted the FBI investigation? Did the FBI detect an odor of corruption arising from Speaker Donovan’s office before Mr. Soucy was recruited to pass along to Mr. Donovan’s former finance director about $20,000 said to have been contributed by an investor hoping to persuade Mr. Donovan to kill state legislation that would have imposed a $5,250 yearly licensing fee and higher taxes on owners of roll-your-own tobacco shops?

Is it plausible that Mr. Donovan was unaware that a major contributor was dumping $20,000 into his campaign kitty for the U.S. House seat soon to be vacated by U.S. Rep Chris Murphy. No whiff of the $20,000 campaign contribution was detected by Mr. Donovan, says the strangely detached Mr. Donovan. What bunnies are clamoring around in FBI hats longing to be pulled out by the ears? Does the FBI have a case against the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Congress? Are leading Democrats in the state right in assuming, following Mr. Donovan’s public mea culpa, that there is no fire in the FBI smoke?

“There’s no fishing expeditions in corruption cases,” said former special FBI agent Mike Clark in a phone interview with Hugh McQuade of CTNewsJunkie “There’s always some type of predicative offense or allegation out there to bring the attention of investigators.”

Mr. Clark is well known in the state as the special agent who helped to secure convictions in corruption cases involving former Gov. John G. Rowland, former state Treasurer Paul Silvester and former Waterbury Mayors Joe Santopietro and Philip Giordano.

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.”