LegiStorm

Nearly three years after lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and fraud, the scandal is still playing out on Capitol Hill.

Thursday, former congressional staffer Trevor L. Blackann pleaded guilty to charges he failed to report gifts he received from lobbyists on this tax returns.

Among the more than $4,000 in gifts received was a trip to New York City for the opening game of the 2003 World Series. Blackann admitted to knowing the trip was paid for by lobbyists. The court documents do not identify the lobbyists in question, but the Department of Justice issued a release calling the case part of the investigation into the lobbying activities of Abramoff. Blackann also did not report the trip to Congress.

One of the trips Blackann did disclose in his time as a congressional aide was paid for by the Dairy Farmers of America. According to filings reported to the House of Representatives, Blackann later worked as a lobbyist for the Dairy Farmers of America in 2007.

Top congressional aides are required to file personal financial disclosures that list gifts and other matters that might reveal conflicts of interest. But Blackann was not required to file a financial disclosure because his salary did not meet the minimum threshold. Instead, prosecutors focused on his tax filings, which did not disclose the gifts as income.

We are proud to launch the latest free LegiStorm resource, a free searchable database to track the explosive growth of legislative earmarks.

The earmarks database builds on other LegiStorm data so users can find important connections between otherwise unconnected facts, such as between earmarks and the corporate-sponsored travel or personal financial holdings of members of Congress and their staff.

"Earmarks have been at the center of several congressional scandals in the past few years, and openness in the process can help combat potential abuses of the earmark system," said Jock Friedly, a former Capitol Hill investigative reporter who is the founder and president of LegiStorm. "LegiStorm is proud to integrate earmarks data with our other data sets in order to bring deeper insight and increased transparency to congressional and executive spending."

LegiStorm's new data were provided by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a group that tracks earmarks in detail.

For more information, read our press release.

When congressional staffers get in trouble, newspapers often cite LegiStorm. Aides rarely do good in the media - if they do, their elected bosses take the credit. 

The Washington Post cited our employment data in reports that one such aide, Jeffrey Rosato of Sen. Barbara Boxer's (D-Calif.) staff, was arrested last Friday on charges of receiving and distributing child pornography. Boxer fired him immediately upon learning of the charges.

The past year has led to several other such news announcements about congressional aides, minors and pornography.

Another aide, James Michael McHaney of Sen. Maria Cantwell's (D-Wash.) office, was sentenced last month to three years in prison on similar child pornography charges.

Earlier this year, Eric Feltner, who served eight years as district director for Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R-Mo.), was charged on two counts of furnishing pornography to a child. He was fired as chief of staff to Missouri's lieutenant governor after he was charged. He was no longer a congressional aide at the time of the alleged incidents.

Late last year, Jeffrey Ray Nielsen, a former aide to Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-Calif.) pled guilty to two charges of molesting teenage boys. He fell under suspicion when police found thousands of images of child pornography on his computers at home and his law office.

The Washington game of musical chairs has begun in earnest as current and former congressional aides angle for new positions. Last week's election has created plenty of opportunity for staffers. Former aides Daniel Maffei, Betsy Markey and Eric Paulsen were actually chosen by voters to return as members of Congress.

One congressional aide has already been named to the new presidential administration. Phil Schiliro, a long-time Hill hand who was chief of staff for Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), has been selected the head of President-elect Barack Obama's legislative affairs office during the transition, and is expected to be Obama's legislative affairs director when the new administration takes office in January. Obama will likely take a large cohort of his Senate staff with him, as well. His own chief of staff, Pete Rouse, is co-chairing the transition team and is expected to serve as a deputy chief of staff in the White House.

Jim Messina, a former chief of staff to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), joined the Obama campaign earlier this year and is the personnel director for the transition team. Robert Gibbs served as Obama's Senate communications director before moving to the same role in the campaign and will likely be the next White House press secretary.

As the adminstration takes shape over the coming weeks, expect many other top congressional aides to move up Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House.

Election Day 2008 will take on a whole new meaning for some former congressional aides.

Tomorrow, a number of former staffers are trying to get back to Capitol Hill with a promotion as a legislator. LegiStorm has the information on how they got their political start.

Perhaps the most notable is Daniel Maffei. Maffei, a former communications aide to Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), narrowly lost to then-incumbent Jim Walsh in 2006. This time around, Walsh has announced his retirement and Maffei is expected to win the seat.

Colorado’s Betsy Markey - a fomer aide to Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) – also has a shot at picking up a seat for the Democrats, as she is in a tight race with Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.).

Anne Barth will have a harder time as a Democrat running in West Virginia’s 2nd District, although she’s getting some help from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Also facing a difficult road is John Stone. This is a bad year to be a Republican challenger in a tight race against a Democrat inbumbent, even in usually Red Georgia. Stone, running for Georgia’s 12th District seat, was a former staffer for Georgia Reps. Charlie Norwood and Max Burns. He’s taking on Rep. John Barrow, who won by fewer than 1,000 votes in 2006 but has had a large money lead over Stone this year.

Other staffers are running campaigns with little real shot at winning a seat: George Phillips (R) in New York’s 22nd District; Greg Goode (R) in Indiana’s 8th District; and Charles Summers (R) in Maine’s 1st District.

Also on the national radar is the race in Minnesota to replace retiring Rep. Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.). The Republican candidate is Eric Paulsen, who was an aide to Ramstad before being elected to the Minnesota House in 1994. A Republican succession is uncertain, however, as Paulsen faces a tight race against Ashwin Madia.

LegiStorm has the congressional salary information for all the former staffers linked above, as well as some other financial disclosure or trip data as well.