Now in Orange.
Oh, the old phrase IOKIYAR. So useful, especially back in the old Jack Abramoff days. In case you are just joining the show already in progress, it stands for It’s OK if you’re a Republican. Get it? Good.
And here we have the latest contestant, Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley. You may know Cooley from such one-hit wonders as initimidating and attempting to crush the union in his office and living the good life through gifts, but this one has to be the pièce de résistance:
In 2003, District Attorney Steve Cooley had a billionaire in his sights. Alan Casden was a real estate developer with a history of generosity toward political campaigns, especially those of local Democrats.
After a grand jury investigation, Cooley brought felony charges against a Casden executive, John Archibald, and 13 other defendants for reimbursing friends and associates for donations to city politicians, thereby violating contribution limits. …
At the time of the investigation, however, Cooley was accepting the same kinds of contributions for his own campaign. While he pursued Casden and others who engaged in similar finance schemes, he did not go after his own contributor, Gladwin Gill. (LA Weekly, emphasis added)
To be clear what was going on here, Gill was giving money to other people to contribute to Republican candidates. He plead guilty to these charges on contributing money for George W. Bush through this scheme. But, importantly, the same people that he used for the Bush scheme? Yeah, they show up on Cooley’s donor lists.
Gill was prosecuted by the federal prosecutors for his federal crimes. Archibald and Casden were thoroughly investigated by Cooley’s office. Pierce O’Donnell, another Democratic contributor was dealt with by Cooley’s office. As for Gill’s local involvement, well, there has been no word from Cooley’s office on that. IOKIYAR, I guess.
Note: As you may know, I do some work for Cooley’s Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris.
UPDATE: Cooley’s campaign consultant, Kevin Spillane, has responded by noting that the statute of limitations has expired, and that the money has been spent anyway. Now folks, that’s how you play IOKIYAR.
Kevin Spillane, FTW!
The response is priceless. Sort of at the level of na na, na na, boo boo, can’t catch me. The statute of limitations has expired? How professional. How reassuring that somebody who aims to fill the state’s top legal job at least knows there is one. How discouraging to find he’s using that knowledge to flout the law. Clearly the GOP finds the concept of the fox guarding the henhouse a sound one.