Justice Dept. ends probe of Rep. Mollohan

Source: Washington Post

The Justice Department has shuttered its nearly four-year investigation into the personal finances of Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.), freeing the 14-term lawmaker to pursue what could be a tough bid for reelection without the lingering cloud of a federal criminal probe.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia had been overseeing an investigation of Mollohan, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, for steering roughly $250 million in line-item expenditures to several nonprofit organizations run by close friends, who also were real estate partners with him.

Mollohan's office was notified this month that the investigation had been closed without criminal charges filed. Federal prosecutors declined to elaborate on what the investigation had found.

"We're not going to get into any details, but I can confirm we've closed the investigation into Alan Mollohan," Ben Friedman, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, said on Monday evening.

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"A federal grand jury issued a flurry of subpoenas to West Virginia-based nonprofits in 2006 and 2007, after a 500-page criminal complaint regarding Mollohan's finances in February 2006.

The complaint came from the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative group that discovered discrepancies in Mollohan's personal financial disclosure forms. It raised questions about how his personal wealth rose -- according to congressional disclosure reports he filed -- from a minimum of $180,000 in 2000 to a minimum of $6.3 million in 2004."



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"Mollohan, 66, is expected to notify House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, of the development in a letter Tuesday. That would clear the way for him to resume full control of a subcommittee that oversees the roughly $28 billion budget for the Justice Department and the nearly $8 billion budget for the FBI.

<snip> The Mollohan investigation came at the height of Democratic attacks on what Pelosi, then the minority leader, called the Republican "culture of corruption." Mollohan served as ranking Democrat on the ethics panel when it admonished House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) in 2004 over fundraising activities."