WP: Justice Official Bought Vacation Home With Oil Lobbyist

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/14/AR2007021401913.html

A senior Justice Department official who recently resigned her post bought a nearly $1 million vacation home with a lobbyist for ConocoPhillips months before approving consent decrees that would give the oil company more time to pay millions of dollars in fines and meet pollution-cleanup rules at some of its refineries.

Sue Ellen Wooldridge, former assistant attorney general in charge of environment and natural resources, bought a $980,000 home on Kiawah Island, S.C., last March with ConocoPhillips lobbyist Don R. Duncan. A third owner of the house is J. Steven Griles, a former deputy interior secretary, who has been informed he is a target in the federal investigation of Jack Abramoff's lobbying activities.

Griles, former assistant attorney general Sue Ellen Wooldridge and ConocoPhillips lobbyist Don R. Duncan bought this vacation home in Kiawah Island, S.C., last year, paying $980,000. Griles and Wooldridge live together. (By Alice Keeney -- Associated Press)

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said yesterday that Wooldridge sought and received approval from a career ethics official in her office before buying the vacation property. Wooldridge's lawyer and officials at ConocoPhillips said that Duncan had no role in negotiating the consent decrees and never lobbied Wooldridge.

Wooldridge, who earlier served in senior positions at the Interior Department, lives with Griles in Virginia. Her investment with Griles and the oil lobbyist took place on March 13, 2006, property records show, during a wide-ranging Justice Department criminal investigation that involves Griles and lobbyists at Interior. The joint purchase and Wooldridge's role in the consent decrees were reported yesterday by the Associated Press.

[stillcool]

1. "Career Ethics Official"

is that like a perk that comes with every government office or only the 'Justice' dept.?

[Doondoo]

2. bump

[Toots]

3. Isn't it SC that just passed some sort of law about unmarried people living together?

:shrug:

[Judi Lynn]

4. Ex-Justice official draws scrutiny

Posted on Thu, Feb. 15, 2007
Ex-Justice official draws scrutiny
SHE BOUGHT HOME WITH LOBBYIST, BOYFRIEND
By John Heilprin
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Nine months before agreeing to let ConocoPhillips delay a half-billion-dollar pollution cleanup, the government's top environmental prosecutor bought a $1 million vacation home with the company's top lobbyist.

Also in on the Kiawah Island, S.C., house deal was former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles, the highest-ranking Bush admin- istration official targeted for criminal prosecution in the Jack Abramoff corruption probe.

Just before resigning last month, Assistant Attorney General Sue Ellen Wooldridge signed two proposed consent decrees with ConocoPhillips: one giving the company as much as two to three more years to install $525 million in pollution controls at nine refineries and the other dealing with a Superfund toxic waste cleanup.

In April, Wooldridge, Griles and ConocoPhillips Vice President Donald Duncan had gone together on a $980,000 home in a gated community at Kiawah Island. Records from the Charleston County Auditor's Office obtained by the Associated Press list Duncan as a 50 percent owner of the home and Wooldridge and Griles as 25 percent owners.
(snip)

``There appears to be a breakdown of ethics at the Justice Department,'' said the committee's chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles. ``Senior Justice Department officials should not be handling cases that affect their close friends and investment partners.''
(snip/...)

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/nation/16703801.htm?source=rss&channel=mercurynews_nation

[autorank]

5. K&"R - we'll be reading these stories for years!!! You just know it. n/t

[salin]

6. Wow. You would think that after all of the public scrutiny

that these folks would by more cautious/careful - esp Griles. They really think they can get away with anything - self-dealing clearly is the GOP way.

[Uben]

7. Look at the dates

This was back when Tom Delay ran the show in the capital. All republicans were issued a teflon jacket and told not to worry about prosecution because they ran the show! As we have seen, many of them, Cunningham, Ney, Abramoff, etc., believed what Delay said was gospel. The scope of corruption is just now being realized. It wouldn't surprise me to see a thousand more cases of corruptiom pop up in the next few years from the 2001-2005 era. They truly believed they would be in power for a long, long time.

Up jumped the undertaker! BUSTED!

Isn't subpoena power just lovely?

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. kick Good info.

[SpiralHawk]

8. republicons = absolute corruption

Is there an honest republicon left?

Apparently not.

[Eugene]

9. "There appears to be a breakdown of ethics..." - Now THERE is an understatement!

Just when you think you've seen it all at Bush & Co., they outdo themselves.
When Rep. Waxman has to spell out the basics about conflict of interest
I think the Bushies have charted new depths. Duncan, Griles, and Wooldridge
wove quite a tangled web here. There may even be a link to Jack Abramoff.

Two government officials form a partnership with a lobbyist who has business
before their agencies, and this relationship "did not raise ethical concerns."
Bush & Co. has abandoned even the pretense of legitimacy. The appropriate
term here is "kleptocracy."

[KansDem]

19. Yeah, it appears the Bushistas have dabbled in "ethics cleansing"

Imagine the possibilities when you have no conscience or shame.

[catgirl]

10. AP: Top prosecutor, lobbyist bought home...(gov envir. employee & oil co.)

ASHINGTON - A House committee will investigate and request documents on a real estate deal involving the government's top environmental prosecutor and ConocoPhillips' top lobbyist, and legal agreements between the government and the oil company.

ADVERTISEMENT

The inquiry by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was announced hours after The Associated Press reported that the prosecutor, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, bought a $1 million vacation home on Kiawah Island, S.C., with ConocoPhillips Vice President Donald R. Duncan, nine months before agreeing to let the company delay a half-billion-dollar pollution cleanup. It was one of two proposed consent decrees Wooldridge signed with ConocoPhillips just before resigning last month.

"There appears to be a breakdown of ethics at the Justice Department," the committee's chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., said Wednesday night. "Senior Justice Department officials should not be handling cases that affect their close friends and investment partners."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/prosecutor_lobbyist;_ylt=AqSMYbAy9Ee5xn2tKZAyY1DMWM0F

[Robbien]

11. Bush's had to recess appoint Sue Ellen Wooldridge

She was on Cheney's Energy Task Force.

She also got the joke of a tobacco settlement.

Typical GOPer

[Canuckistanian]

13. Steven J. Griles - what a scumbag. A disciple of James Watt.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=J._Steven_Griles

Additional ties to industry include the receipt of $284,000.00 a year as part of a $1.1 million payment for his client base from National Environmental Strategies (NES), the oil and gas lobbying firm Griles worked for. As deputy secretary of the Interior, Griles is charged with overseeing and revamping environmental regulations that affect the profits of his former clients and NES's current clients. <15> Since assuming office Griles has:

* pushed rollbacks in environmental standards for air and water;
* advocated increased oil and gas drilling on public lands
* tried to exempt the oil industry from royalty payments
* sought to create new loopholes in regulations governing stripmining.<16>

Griles also sat on the President's senior policy group for the "Clear Skies" initiative (a misleading euphemistic name for a policy that is notorious for easing restrictions on corporate polluters), participating in at least 11 of its meetings. Edison Electric Institute, a former Griles client, was reported to have been present at one of those meetings.<17>

He's one of the worst examples of the lobbyist/public official merry-go-round. He's done it several times , since 1970.

[Scriptor Ignotus]

14. the DOJ "breakdown of ethics"

will go nicely with their respective breakdowns of logic and sanity.

[RedEarth]

15. Good grief, these people are so f........ corrupt

[progressivebydesign]

16. What scumbags. n/t

[saigon68]

17. Sleaze balls

[MGKrebs]

18. "Duncan ... never lobbied Wooldridge."

What does that mean exactly? Didn't call the office to schedule an appointment?

One might wonder if Ms. Wooldridge paid a full 1/3 of the purchase price.

edit: I see that she "owns" a 25% share. That implies, although does not state with certainty, that she paid 25% for that share.