As the richest person in the House of Representatives, Darrell Issa has a vast personal empire that includes a wide range of real estate holdings. His dealings around those real estate investments have raised legal and ethical questions in the past, and more recently Roll Call has questioned the line that divides his personal and political interests. This morning, ThinkProgress reports on a far more troubling conflict:
Oversight business will kick off after the recess tomorrow morning with a hearing on whether Dodd-Frank reforms of the financial sector have effectively ended 'too big to fail.' Stirring up the necessary acrimony and controversy, subcommittee chair Patrick McHenry refused to allow Barney Frank -- namesake of the legislation -- to appear at the hearing. McHenry, incidentally, has received major campaign funding from the banking and insurance industries and been called out for conflicts of interest after investigating banker bonuses after accepting contributions from Countrywide.
The mix of Issa's campaign funds, friends, and investigations hasn't produced much to be encouraged by so far in his tenure at the helm of the Oversight Committee. With lives on the line, it's time for Darrell Issa to finally step up and get the job done.
The folks over at Media Matters have been keeping the heat on Issa in the last week. They started by highlighting that Darrell Issa had called a major campaign contributor as a committee witness:
Darrell Issa has a long history in the tech industry, with close ties that continue today -- and have recently gotten him in some trouble. More personally, he's also a notorious tech junkie, unable to resist fiddling with new gadgets and the tech toys of everyone around him. So if anyone should understand how important net neutrality is, you'd think it would be Darrell Issa. But instead, he's been steadfast in walking the corporate conservative line, adopting the favorite industry astroturf demand that the government not protect equal access.
Darrell Issa picked up again Tuesday on his long-running opposition to last year's landmark health care reforms, in the process demonstrating a stunning hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness.
Roll Call continues tugging on a thread it uncovered late last week, asking further questions about Darrell Issa's blurry ethical distinction between public and private business. On Tuesday, Paul Singer noted that Issa's DEI entity -- sometimes a reference to his initials, sometimes to his company Direct Electronics Inc -- had been bleeding over into government business in a few instances.
Darrell Issa has been in the headlines this week for all the reasons that politicians don't want to be in the headlines. Driving the attention is the firing of spokesman Kurt Bardella after Politico raised concerns about Bardella's cooperation with a New York Times reporter that involved sharing correspondence with other reporters. This would mostly be a tabloid-style sideshow in other times, and much of the press coverage has taken that focus. However, as Ryan Lizza points out, this points again to the deeper forces at play around Issa right now. According to Lizza, Issa's office knew full well about Bardella's sharing of the emails, but it also reveals a deeper concern
Issa spokesman Kurt Bardella was fired today, the day after Politico reported allegations that Bardella was improperly sharing emails between reporters.
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Issa sought funds via “easy way to end up with corruption in government”
Out of excuses, Issa contradicts himself in avoiding NewsCorp
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posted by Lucas O’Connor at 6:07 am