Rep. Aaron Schock, on a junket in India.
It's hard being Rep. Aaron Schock, a one-time rising star now exposed to be just another grifter. A grifter with good taste, but a grifter. Salon
catches us up on the deluge of very bad news stories for the young lawmaker.
First came the revelation that taxpayers had picked up the tab for Schock’s office redecorating, followed by a succession of stories on the congressman’s other ethically dubious practices: Selling his home to a wealthy donor for a price well above the market rate. Charging taxpayers and campaign donors for private plane trips and Katy Perry concerts. Failing to report gifts and meals from a lavish London junket in 2011. Billing the public for a private plane flight to a Chicago Bears game — a few weeks after he milked the public coffers so he and his staffers could spend a weekend in New York City, where most of those present had minimal official business.
With Schock, it is becoming embarrassingly clear, there's always another shoe to drop. And so one did on Monday evening. The latest revelation concerns Schock's travel to the aforementioned Bears game. Schock had already billed taxpayers $10,000 for his private flight to the November 16 Bears-Viking match, but it turns out that he also used another $3,000 in taxpayer funds to pay for the flight. However, Schock reported that $3,000 as a software purchase on federal campaign finance records. An innocent mix-up? Not quite: Keith Siilats, the chief technology officer of the firm from which Schock claimed to have purchased software, told Politico, "I never sold him software."
So Politico decided to
ask him directly if he broke the law, and his answer is priceless: "Well, I certainly hope not. […] I'm not an attorney."
Hey, it works for climate change deniers. "I'm not a scientist, but…." Or anti-choice legislators. "I'm not a doctor, but…." This one, though, this one is a little harder to swallow. Because it's, you know, the ethical guidelines and the federal campaign finance laws that govern his actual job. It's like being pulled over for speeding, and telling the cop "I'm sorry officer, I'm not a professional driver. How would I know how to drive your legal speed limit?"
What's more there are actually people hired by the House of Representatives to help members out with questions like that. Like, "hey, if I spend this $3,000 in taxpayer funds to go to a football game, would it be okay to call it 'software'?" To which, the ethics consultant in the House would say, "no, that would be illegal." Easy peasy. If you actually care about complying with the law. But that's for commoners.