Murtha in Scheme Funneling Funds to Benefit Friends, Ex-Staffers

Last week’s release of FBI documents finally put in writing what nobody had ever said on the record: The FBI suspected that former Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and lobbyists close to him were running a scheme to funnel earmarks to sham companies and nonprofits to benefit the lawmaker’s friends and former staffers.

Read the whole thing.

Here's the infuriating thing:

The Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation into Murtha and some of the lobbyists in his orbit, a fact that never leaked while Murtha was alive.

In part, the probe never leaked precisely because he was alive.

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a Freedom of Information Act request for Justice Department files on Murtha and other Members of Congress. Its requests have been denied for the living Members on the grounds that they have a right to privacy,

There was not just one instance of money being funnelled to cronies and assistants, but a whole network of companies, organizations and lobbying groups that collected payoffs.  Need more evidence that it was all a grand Murtha money laundering scheme?  The network disappeared when Murtha died.

So it seems that if the government doesn't want to prosecute a congressman or other public official, that person skates, and not matter how corrupt he is, he gets to die in bed as long as the Feds cover for him. That's a rather cozy arrangement.