Reid land sale — Dems still aren’t “clean as a hound’s tooth” on ethics themselves

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, using a limited liability company, cleared $1.1 million two years ago on a suburban Las Vegas parcel. He bought the land personally in 1998, then sold it to the LLC in 2001 and never disclosed that sale on his annual public ethics filing..

Senate ethics rules require lawmakers to disclose on their annual ethics report all transactions involving investment properties — regardless of profit or loss — and to report any ownership stake in companies.

Kent Cooper, who oversaw government disclosure reports for federal candidates for two decades in the Federal Election Commission, said Reid's failure to report the 2001 sale and his ties to Brown's company violated Senate rules.

“This is very, very clear,” Cooper said. “Whether you make a profit or a loss you’ve got to put that transaction down so the public, voters, can see exactly what kind of money is moving to or from a member of Congress.”

“It is especially disconcerting when you have a member of the leadership, of either party, not putting in the effort to make sure this is a complete and accurate report,” said Cooper. “That says something to other members. It says something to the Ethics Committee.”

Other parts of the deal — such as the informal handling of property taxes — raise questions about possible gifts or income reportable to Congress and the IRS, ethics experts said.

Stanley Brand, former Democratic chief counsel of the House, said Reid should have disclosed the 2001 sale and that his omission fits a larger culture in Congress where lawmakers aren't following or enforcing their own rules.

“It’s like everything else we’ve seen in last two years. If it is not enforced, people think it’s not enforced and they get lax and sloppy,” Brand said.

So, how ethical does Reid think the deal was? Well, the AP story says he hung up the phone when asked for comment.

Remember, Reid still has not given back, or given to charity, campaign contributions he received from Indian tribal clients connected to Jack Abramoff, either. I’ve said it in the past and I’ll say it again, that while the Democrats got a definite improvement over Tom Daschle in a minority leader willing to fight GOP fire with fire, they also got someone who is, well, rough around the edges, and with no signs of smoothing out.

Update: Taking his cues from Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo’s Paul Kiel laments that “The AP’s John Solomon takes another shot at nailing Harry Reid.

Now, it may be true, as Josh has claimed in the past, that Solomon has some personal bias against Reid.

But, Kiel ignores several facts.

One, this story was co-bylined, also being written by Kathleen Hennessey. Yes, Solomon’s the lead writer, but, when you have multiple writers involved, you’re going to have an editor, or bureau chief in the AP’s case, riding at least a little bit of herd. Even if Solomon is assistant or deputy bureau chief, you have somebody else at least available on the side to integrate what the two writers uncovered on their own if there’s any questions about how it fits together, normally.

Second, it’s not as if John Solomon is churning out anti-Reid stories by the dozen. Sourcewatch lists just two such articles with Reid officially headlined in the past 18 months, before this story.

Third: You know, Josh, Paul, Media Matters, et al, there might just be some fire behind the smoke here. This particular article has nothing to do with Reid-Abramoff connections and plenty to do with the often-shady world of Las Vegas politics. And that’s true even if Solomon’s doing heavy-duty ax-grinding. And, there’s just too much in the article for all of this to be ax-grinding, even if that does explain Reid hanging up on Solomon.