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As you read this, the House Ethics Committee is moving toward
hiring an outside counsel to investigate charges against Speaker of
the House Newt Gingrich.

As Mother Jones has reported over the last year, Gingrich
constructed an illegal fundraising machine that enabled him to flout
federal campaign laws and misuse the tax-exempt status allowed
charities. The machine consisted of Gingrich’s political action
committee, GOPAC; his think tank, the Progress & Freedom
Foundation; and his televised college course, “Renewing American
Civilization.” These intertwined projects made up a stealth
organization that sponsored congressional candidates who would be
loyal to Gingrich. As far back as 1986, current Republican
presidential candidate Lamar Alexander understood Gingrich was
using GOPAC for this purpose (see documents below).

In addition to the ethics charges pending against Gingrich, the
Federal Election Commission is suing GOPAC for evading campaign
finance laws. Among the evidence the FEC has presented in U.S.
District Court is a

leaked
list of major GOPAC donors
annotated by
Mother Jones. The list includes many donors who appear to have
received political paybacks. (For details on yet another Gingrich
organization through which donors may be trying to buy influence, see
Reading between the lines.)

To show that the speaker of the House is not above the law, the
Ethics Committee must appoint an independent, outside counsel, and
must place no limits on the scope of the investigation. Specifically,
the counsel needs to get a complete accounting of all the money
Gingrich’s various enterprises took in and spent. Anything less will
open the Ethics Committee to charges of a cover-up.

Under Gingrich’s control, GOPAC refused to release its finances,
claiming it funded mostly local and state campaigns and therefore
didn’t need to comply with federal laws. But a leaked 1986
correspondence between Gingrich, then-Tennessee Gov. Lamar
Alexander, and Alexander fundraiser Ted Welch suggests otherwise:


From Newt Gingrich to Ted Welch:

“It’s our job to help our party to become competitive in the
additional districts it will take to allow us to capture a majority
in the U.S. House–some 50 in all. We work in conjunction with the
National Congressional Committee, and our program has the hearty
endorsement of President Reagan and other Republican leaders.”
–Newt Gingrich

From Lamar Alexander to Newt
Gingrich:

“This suggestion is that you are now busy electing
congressmen, instead of [state] legislators…. The last
thing we need is another operation promoting senators and
congressmen.” –Lamar Alexander

Click on the above letters to see the full-sized, scanned image
of each.

Want more on Newt? Check out Newt-O-Rama.
It contains links
to all our stuff on our favorite Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.
For more on Lamar Alexander’s presidential bid, or for news
on any candidate, visit The
Race for the White House
.

See Hot!Media for more resources.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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