Don Young's Name Surfaces in Coverage of Rare MLK Day Court Filing

A Texas blog devoted to keeping track of GOP corruption, has speculated that aspects of a pleading filed Monday in the United States Court for the District of Columbia by M. Kendall Day and Peter C. Sprung, trial attorneys for the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division of the DOJ, may relate to Rep. Don Young of Alaska.

The documents have to do with the ongoing prosecution of former Don Young staffer, Fraser Verrusio. According to an article last year by Talking Points Memo, Verrusio was, at the time his conduct has come into question, working for Young as a "policy director on the House Transportation committee. According to the indictment, he accepted the trip in exchange for inserting into the Federal Highway bill amendments favorable to an equipment rental company, which had hired [Jack] Abramoff's firm to lobby for it."

The detail of the pleading indicates that Verrusio was being leaned on by the public integrity unit to cooperate on multiple investigations, and is balking, possibly looking for a more favorable sentence, possibly seeking to have charges dismissed.

You can download the related court documents at this article, DOJ Wanted Verrusio to be Confidential Source:

Whoa! What's that? The FBI wanted Mr. Verrusio to become a "confidential source" in an unrelated matter? Against whom would the DoJ want Mr. Verrusio provide information? We're guessing that the DoJ wanted Mr. Verrusio to provide information against his former boss, Rep. Don Young (R-Ak.). Remember that Rep. Young has been designated as United States Representative A in an unrelated criminal investigation. Often, when individuals are given cutesy names like that, we later learn that they were subjects of a federal investigation. Since this case is an unrelated matter (presumably unrelated to the Abramoff scandal), it is outside the scope of the ACR Blog.

image - Darkblack. Hat tip to an anonymous commenter