The World Around You

The Birmingham News reports that Senate Democrats need further explanation from Bill Pryor on his fundraising activities for the Republican Attorney Generals Association.

Internal documents from the Republican Attorneys General Association “so far appear to contradict” the “completeness and accuracy” of Pryor’s answers to questions from senators about his work for RAGA, according to a letter written Wednesday by Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

The documents detail fund-raising phone calls Pryor made to representatives of various companies, invoices sent to a few who paid money and joined the group, and other RAGA related funding information.

A confidential weeklong investigation by Democratic and Republican staffers of the Senate Judiciary Committee into the fund-raising was compromised, Leahy and Kennedy say, because those documents were discussed in an opinion column published Wednesday in the Mobile Register.

“This breach clearly now has complicated and lengthened the time it will take to learn the truth,” they wrote to committee chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. Efforts to reach a spokeswoman for Hatch Wednesday afternoon were unsuccessful. Hatch told The Associated Press the vote will go on today as scheduled.

The opinion column referred to was by Quin Hilyer of the Mobile Register. Hilyer made an interesting connection between this story and the controversy following our former Governor,

Those documents they had — documents that gave them more information about RAGA than Pryor himself has access to — came from a former secretary of Claire Austin’s by the name of Kelly Foradori. Foradori stopped working for Austin at the end of 1999, after helping with RAGA’s first-ever major fundraiser (on Kiawah Island, S.C.).

Austin says she remembers confronting Foradori then to ask if Foradori retained any documents. Turns out, her suspicions were right. Foradori e-mailed those documents to the committee. Most were memos from Austin to vari ous donors. Only a few mention Pryor. But they do show names and affiliations of people who were scheduled to attend some RAGA events.

Foradori’s motive in all this is unclear. When reached by cell phone yesterday, before I could even identify myself, she told me: I don’t have any comment for you, and please do not call my cell phone again.

What is known is that Foradori was a longtime employee of lobbyist Lanny Young — and a highly paid one at that, said Austin. Austin briefly had a business with Young, and she said Foradori came with Young (already making what for a clerical employee was a hefty salary) when Austin and Young joined forces.

Lanny Young last month pleaded guilty to bribing Nick Bailey, a top aide to former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. Bill Pryor’s office is working in conjunction with federal Justice Department officials in the ongoing investigation involving Young, Bailey and others in the Siegelman orbit.

Now Foradori, at least at one time a close associate and employee of Young’s, has sent Austin’s RAGA documents — retained against Austin’s wishes more than three years ago — to committee staffers representing U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., a leading Pryor opponent.

I think I smell a dirty political payback for an attorney general doing his job, which is prosecuting people for crimes.

But having looked at those documents myself, I see no smoking gun — nor, for that matter, any gunpowder or bullets or even anything approaching a crime or ethical transgression, that would rightly block Pryor’s nomination. Because when it comes to following the law, Bill Pryor is always precise.

Sometimes to his own political detriment.

Maybe the real story is the motivation of Foradori. Stay tuned…