Sweatin' To The Indictments

TPM Muckraker has the details on what the Wilkes-Foggo indictments mean for California's Republican delegation in Congress. I expect the legal fees to increase.

The indictment and its details would seem to heighten the risk to other members of Congress still under investigation; Mr. Wilkes also had dealings with several of them.

A separate federal criminal investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis, the California Republican who until January 2006 was chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, is continuing in Los Angeles. Prosecutors in that case are looking at Mr. Lewis's relationship with Mr. Wilkes, which included campaign contributions from Mr. Wilkes and associates and the hiring by Mr. Wilkes of a lobbying firm founded by one of Mr. Lewis's closest friends, former Rep. Bill Lowery.

Lewis is likely to be the first to drop as a result of the criminal proceedings yesterday. Lowery and him had a quid pro quo relationship that Wilkes knows all about. In particular, a deal to restore funding for the F-22 fighter jet only after Wilkes' company received a defense contract to digitize military documents in the Panama Canal Zone looks very fishy.

Lewis has already spent nearly a million dollars in legal fees during pending investigations.