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Jesse Jackson Jr. shielding his wife
It looks like former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), who resigned Wednesday, is trying to take any potential heat off of his wife, Ald. Sandi Jackson (7th) -- who is also his campaign manager.I'm told that Sandi Jackson has hired her own legal representation as her husband's lawyers try to work out a deal in the ongoing federal probe of his campaign finances. It doesn't take too much reading between the lines of Jackson's resignation letter -- unusually poignant -- that he is telling the feds to blame him -- and leave his wife out of it. In the letter, sent Wednesday to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Jackson acknowledged the probe for the first time, said he is cooperating with "the investigators, and accept responsibility for my mistakes, for they are my mistakes and mine alone." It's prudent for Sandi Jackson to have her own lawyer. She is under the microscope herself as federal agents are digging into Jackson campaign spending. According to campaign finance disclosures, Sandi Jackson has been drawing $5,000-a-month payments from her husband's main campaign fund through her firm, J. Donnatella and Associates. Her company has been on the Jackson campaign payroll for years, and it is located, according to FEC records, in the couples' Washington red-brick rowhouse off DuPont Circle. Sandi Jackson was deeply involved in the South Side and south suburban political operation the couple put together -- run for a time from the basement of their Chicago home. Former Rep. Jackson hired three high-powered lawyers to represent him -- Reid H. Weingarten and Brian M. Heberlig, partners in the Washington office of Steptoe & Johnson, and former U.S. Attorney Dan K. Webb, a Winston & Strawn partner in Chicago. This team only represents the former congressman. Posted by: Au Auric 2012-11-26 |
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