April 24, 2005

Jen -- make some popcorn, this one's gonna be interesting...

Jay Tea at Wizbang reports on the last few years of Ray Reggie's life and what he has been doing. The lad has led an interesting life:
(Maybe) Coming soon to a major media outlet near you...
Yesterday, I briefly touched on the Ray Reggie mess. Now, it's time to delve a little more deeply into this scandal that could pit the two major Democratic power families against each other.

It all began back in 1992, when Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) married a Washington lawyer named Victoria Reggie. Everyone knows about the bagggage Ted brought with him, but it turned out that Vickie had some of her own. Namely, her brother Ray.

Ray was a political operative out of New Orleans. He was a talented fund-raiser, and used his his sister's new family connections to help him move up to the big leagues. He was soon in Washington, a favored confidante of the Clintons (in fact, he was a guest in the Lincoln Bedroom at least once). And in 2000, he was a key fund-raiser for Hillary's Senate bid.

But Ray had a darker side. He had a fondness for teenage girls (much like the late, not-overly-lamented Michael Kennedy, Ted's nephew), and liked to use the novel approach of pulling them over with a fake blue light in his car. He was also into creative financing, and was caught ripping off three banks for the sum total of $3.5 million dollars. And in 2002, it all caught up with him.

That would have been worth a minor scandal, but Ray apparently had something worth bartering with -- his contacts within the Democratic Party. In exchange for leniency, Ray agreed to wear a wire during future meetings with Democratic officials. And over the next 2 1/2 years, he met with Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and numerous other party leaders and their staffs.

It turns out that their efforts to "turn" Ray were a good investment. Currently David Rosen, Hillary's main fund-raiser, is scheduled to go on trial next month for violating campaign-finance laws. He apparently bragged to Ray that he'd put on a Hollywood fund-raiser for Hillary that ran $1.2 million but only reported it cost $400,000, letting private donors pick up the rest of the tab -- meaning that $800,000 of donations went unreported to the federal government. And insiders say this is only the tip of the iceberg Ray led the feds to.
I would love to be a fly on the wall of the Democratic headwquarters right now. Or Sen. Kennedey's office. Jay links to the few stories about this that are showing up in the MSM. Posted by DaveH at April 24, 2005 8:42 PM