Last week, ThinkProgress broke a story revealing that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) placed nearly $1 million in earmarks potentially benefiting real estate property that he owns. In early 2008, Issa publicly listed a multi-million earmark improvement on West Vista Way in Vista, California. Later that year, Issa purchased a $16.6 million medical office building on the same road where he had requested an earmark. He made the purchase with the knowledge that the earmark was pending, then finalized the deal before slipping the earmark into an Omnibus spending bill.
On Saturday, Jeff McDonald at the San Diego Union-Tribune published an article about the controversy. Reached for comment, Issa’s spokesman Frederick Hill called ThinkProgres “part of a left-wing attack machine.” However, in his next statement to McDonald, Issa’s spokesman appeared to concede that the earmark represented a conflict of interest:
“Representative Issa started making requests for West Vista Way in 2006,” Hill said. “After he bought the building, he didn’t make any more requests. The allegation by Think Progress is patently false.”
By claiming that the Issa consciously “didn’t make any more [earmark] requests” to improve the West Vista Road after the building purchase, Issa’s spokesman is tacitly acknowledging that the earmark would financially benefit Issa’s real estate, and that such earmark is unethical.............................
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