Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-WV)

Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-WV) is a 13th-term member of Congress, representing the first district of West Virginia.  His ethics issues stem from misusing his position to benefit himself, his family and his friends and misreporting a dramatic increase in his personal assets.  Rep. Mollohan was included in CREW’s 2006 and 2007 reports on congressional corruption.

Earmarking of Funds for His Personal Benefit

Over the past 10 plus years, Rep. Mollohan has earmarked $369 million in federal grants to his district for 254 separate programs.  Between 1997 and 2006, $250 million of that total was directed to five nonprofit organizations that were created by Rep. Mollohan, staffed by his friends, and received the largest earmarks from Rep. Mollohan.  During the same period, top-paid employees, board members and contractors of these organizations gave at least $397,122 to Rep. Mollohan’s campaign and political action committees.

If Rep. Mollohan accepted campaign donations in direct exchange for earmarking federal funds to the nonprofits run by these donors he may have violated the bribery statute, the illegal gratuity statute, honest services fraud and House rules prohibiting dispensing special favors and engaging in conduct that does not reflect creditably on the House.

In June 2004, Rep. Mollohan, his wife, and two top aides took a five-day trip to Bilboa, Spain.  The trip, arranged by the West Virginia High Technology Consortium and costing over $36,000 ($7,800 of which constituted the Mollohans’ expenses), was paid for by a group of government contractors to whom Rep. Mollohan funneled more than $250 million in earmarked funds.  By soliciting funding for his trip to Spain from TMC Technologies one month after TMC received a $5 million contract as a result of an earmark from him, Rep. Mollohan appears to be in violation of the illegal gratuity statute as well as House travel rules.

In June 2007, despite all of the legal questions surrounding some of Rep. Mollohan’s previous earmarks, Rep. Mollohan requested a $1 million earmark to allow the Department of the Interior to expand a wilderness area abutting property owned by the congressman, thereby increasing the property’s value.

Financial Disclosure Forms

Between 2000 and 2004, Rep. Mollohan went from owning assets of less than $500,000, generating less than $80,000 in income in 2000, to at least $6.3 million in assets earning $200,000 to $1.2 million in 2004.  As of 2005, Rep. Mollohan’s reported personal assets were worth at least $8 million and his liabilities were in excess of $3.43 million.  In June 2006, Rep. Mollohan was forced to file two dozen corrections to his past six financial disclosure forms. If Rep. Mollohan knowingly filed inaccurate financial disclosure statements he broke the law prohibiting false statements.
    
Department of Justice Investigation

Because of the pending Department of Justice criminal investigation, in January 2007, when Rep. Mollohan was named as the chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State and Related Agencies, he recused himself from working on matters related to the Department of Justice’s budget.  Rep. Mollohan also recused himself from a March 2008 hearing at which FBI Director Robert Mueller testified because of the investigation. The FBI has subpoenaed financial records from the non-profit organizations that have benefitted from federal funding steered to them by Rep. Mollohan.  In addition, at least one witness has been subpoenaed to testify about Rep. Mollohan’s finances before a grand jury.  

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