{"id":4072,"date":"2008-12-15T17:56:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-15T23:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/12\/more-attention-on-probe-of-richardson-donor\/"},"modified":"2008-12-15T17:56:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-15T23:56:00","slug":"more-attention-on-probe-of-richardson-donor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2008\/12\/more-attention-on-probe-of-richardson-donor\/","title":{"rendered":"More attention on probe of Richardson donor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The federal grand jury investigation I reported on earlier today<\/a> into the awarding of a lucrative state contract to a California company that made big contributions to political action committees formed by Gov. Bill Richardson<\/a> is starting to gain wider attention.<\/p>\n

The Bloomberg.com<\/a> article upon which my earlier posting was based has been linked to all day from the widely-read Drudge Report<\/a>. Perhaps more indicative that the mainstream media is picking up on the story is that the Washington Post<\/a> published its own article on the investigation this afternoon.<\/p>\n

The Post\u2019s article, which is currently featured prominently on the newspaper\u2019s home page, included some new details. According to the newspaper, the probe is \u201cin a highly active stage,\u201d two \u201csources familiar with the matter\u201d said. On Tuesday in Albuquerque, according to the Post, the grand jury is expected to hear testimony from several witnesses, including officials at J.P. Morgan, who worked with the state and CDR Financial<\/a>, and from officials with Richardson\u2019s political action committees.<\/p>\n

CDR won a contract related to the massive transportation-funding plan Richardson dubbed GRIP — or Governor Richardson\u2019s Investment Partnership<\/a> — in 2004. According to Bloomberg, \u201cCDR made $1.48 million advising the authority on interest-rate swaps and restructuring escrow funds for $1.6 billion of transportation bonds issued by the agency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in 2003 and 2004, CDR Financial gave $75,000 to Richardson\u2019s political action committee Si Se Puede!, and the company\u2019s head, David Rubin, gave $25,000 to Moving America Forward, another Richardson PAC.<\/p>\n

No information released publicly has directly linked Richardson to the probe, but the investigation centers around whether staffers in Richardson\u2019s office influenced the hiring of CDR. The commerce secretary-designate could face questions about the situation when he goes through a Senate confirmation hearing in late January or February.<\/p>\n

Richardson declined to comment on the probe earlier today. Officials in the press offices of Richardson and Barack Obama<\/a> have not responded to requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The federal grand jury investigation I reported on earlier today into the awarding of a lucrative state contract to a California company that made big contributions to political action committees formed by Gov. Bill Richardson is starting to gain wider attention. The Bloomberg.com article upon which my earlier posting was based has been linked to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}