Cantor, biz give to Bachus’s defense
Rep. Spencer Bachus has been cleared of any ethical wrongdoing for insider trading, but his legal defense fund is just getting off the ground with backing from House Republicans and Alabama-based supporters.
The powerful House Financial Services chairman recently brought in more than $215,000 over the past four months, according to a filing with the House Ethics Committee.
During that same time period, he spent $209,000, the majority of that going to Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and Patton Boggs for legal fees. Bachus had already reported spending $422,000 in legal fees from his campaign account, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.
The bulk of Bachus’s legal defense fund take came from corporations and PACs with ties to Alabama, including Mortgage America, Inc., Bryant Bank and Citizens Bancorp of Winfield, Inc. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) each contributed $5,000 through their respective leadership political action committees. Bachus also contributed $5,000 to the legal defense fund through his leadership PAC.
Several of the individuals who wrote checks were previous Bachus political supporters, including Southern Research Institute’s President and CEO John Secrist and the group’s director of government affairs Watson Donald, First Financial Bank’s Albert Hegyi and his wife Celia, and Crowne Partner’s Alan Engel.
Bachus first came under scrutiny in 2010 after The Wall Street Journal reported that he had made dozens of trades betting that the stock market would fall, including many in the midst of the U.S. financial crisis in September 2008. At the time, Bachus was the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee.
Bachus’ trading was examined in the book “Throw Them All Out” by Peter Schweizer and later in a “60 Minutes” segment questioning whether Bachus was enriching himself through information he learned in his official capacity. The controversy over Bachus was used to justify passage of the STOCK Act earlier this year, banning lawmakers and aides from using insider information for personal investments.
The Alabama Republican created the legal defense fund in February, just days after it was revealed that he was under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics. The OCE recommended the Bachus probe be closed in late April after finding no violations of insider trading rules.
Bachus spokesman Tim Johnson did not respond to an email request for comment.