follow the money

Washington D.C. defense contractor Mitchell Wade pled guilty in February 06' to paying then-California Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham more than $1 million in bribes.

Wade’s company MZM Inc. received its first federal contract from the White House. The contract, which ran from July 15 to August 15, 2002, stipulated that Wade be paid $140,000 to “provide office furniture and computers for Vice President Dick Cheney.”

Two weeks later, on August 30, 2002, Wade purchased a yacht for $140,000 for Duke Cunningham.

According to Cunningham’s sentencing memorandum, the purchase price of the boat had been negotiated through a third-party earlier that summer, around the same time the White House contract was signed.

To recap, the White House awarded a one-month, $140,000 contract to an individual who never held a federal contract. Two weeks after he got paid, that same contractor used a cashier’s check for exactly that amount to buy a boat for a now-imprisoned congressman at a price that the congressman had pre-negotiated.

Koinky Dinky?