Flashback 2000: Richard Trumka and Andrew Stern and Corruption Allegations

Flashback 2000. Labor Watch reports:

During the convention, Newsweek reported that a communications company called the Share Group, formerly headed by Michael Ansara, one of the small fry convicted in the Teamsters probe, had been paid $1 million for campaign work for Vice President Al Gore, the DNC, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Ansara transferred 59 percent of the company to his wife before his guilty plea, but he remains a contract employee and keeps an office there. Only after the Newsweek story broke did the Gore campaign terminate the firm’s contract.

Ansara has yet to be sentenced by a federal judge in New York and he is said to be cooperating with prosecutors in the investigation, which U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White claims is still being pursued. But reporters are questioning the integrity of Ansara’s cooperation because, until the story surfaced, he was being paid by a Democratic Party with much to gain from his silence. Similarly, Bill Hamilton, the Teamsters’ political director who was tried and convicted for his role in the scandal last year, reportedly continued to benefit from AFL-CIO public relations contracts during his trial. Among the remaining subjects of the U.S. Attorney’s investigation—in addition to Trumka, McEntee and Carey—are former White House deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes, principal Clinton/Gore financier Terry McAuliffe, McEntee’s deputy Paul Booth, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president Andrew Stern and octogenarian Theodore Kheel, famed New York lawyer, labor power broker and mediator. Testimony in the Hamilton case, as well as other evidence, connects these labor powerhouses to criminal activity and leaves many observers wondering why they haven’t been indicted.

Imagine that.