Cold Hard Cash
Congressman Caught on Video Taking a Bribe
(This essay is adapted from Washington Babylon: From George Washington to Donald Trump, Scandals That Rocked the Nation.)
On Tuesday, August 9, 2022, FBI agents stopped vacationing Republican Representative Scott Perry (Pennsylvania) and his family in order to seize Perry’s cell phone. Perry said he was “outraged — though not surprised — that the F.B.I., under the direction of Merrick Garland’s D.O.J., would seize the phone of a sitting member of Congress.” The search and seizure of items belonging to a sitting member of the legislative branch by representatives of the executive branch is reminiscent of a similar incident.
Investor Lori Mody told the FBI in March 2005 that Democratic Congressman William Jefferson of Louisiana was soliciting bribes from her in order to support her business deal in Nigeria. Louisville, Kentucky-based iGate was a technology company that wanted to provide broadband services for internet and television in the west African nation. Mody had invested $3.5 million in the tech firm. Jefferson’s involvement with iGate began years earlier.
Vernon Jackson was the owner of iGate, which delivered high-speed internet and other broadband services over existing telephone lines. Jackson thought iGate’s technology would be the perfect vehicle to bring the internet to developing nations with poor infrastructure.
Jefferson was a vocal advocate for American investment in Africa. Jackson thought Jefferson would wholeheartedly support his efforts to bring iGate technology to the continent. Jefferson agreed.
In 2000, Jefferson began using his contacts in Africa and his bully pulpit to promote adoption of iGate technology in Nigeria. Jefferson had a relationship with Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who owned a home in the Washington, DC, suburb of Potomac, Maryland.
However, the following year, Jefferson informed Jackson the congressman’s services would no longer be free. They would come at a cost. Jefferson told Jackson the financial terms of his support going forward included a monthly consulting fee, a cut of iGate’s sales, and a million iGate shares. Jefferson directed the monthly consulting fee to be paid to a firm he set up that was managed by his wife and employed his five children. Over the course of five years, Jackson transferred nearly $500,000 to the ANJ Group.
Brett Pfeffer was on Jefferson’s congressional staff in the late 1990s. In 2003, he was hired by Lori Mody, who was seeking advice on business investments. Pfeffer introduced Mody to Jefferson. Jefferson sold Mody on a proposal to invest as much as $45 million in iGate. It was a sure hit, he told her. Jefferson would create a company, owned by Mody, that would partner with a Nigerian telecommunications firm to use iGate technology to deliver broadband services to Nigerians. Mody would only have to make a $3.5 million investment up front to get started.
After Mody’s investment was made, Jefferson then informed her there were financial considerations she must meet in order to move forward to ensure Jefferson could win Nigerian government approval for Mody’s venture. Jefferson offered to lobby the Export-Import Bank of the United States to provide low-interest loans to help finance the venture. Jefferson demanded part ownership of the newly formed company owned by Mody in return for his efforts. Jefferson was so bold as to make a bribe request of Mody in the House members’ private dining room.
Uncomfortable with Jefferson’s demands and worried about her multimillion-dollar investment, Mody approached the FBI in spring 2005. Beginning in March, the FBI placed a hidden wire on Mody, as she conducted a series of meetings with Jefferson. Their telephone calls were wiretapped.
Over the next couple of months, Jefferson insisted his family’s stake in Mody’s Nigerian telecommunications venture be increased to nearly one-third. Jefferson’s family would also have to take partial ownership in Mody’s other Nigerian-related business ventures.
In a taped conversation, Jefferson told Mody that he needed $100,000 in cash in order to bribe Nigerian officials regarding Mody’s Nigerian investments. On July 30, 2005, Mody met with Jefferson at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Arlington, Virginia’s, Pentagon City to hand over a briefcase filled with the bribe money. The FBI provided the cash and had recorded the serial numbers for all the bills. The FBI recorded the money exchange on videotape.
Two days after Mody gave the money to Jefferson, she called him. Jefferson told Mody he had already passed the money to his Nigerian contact, who “was very pleased.” Four days later, the FBI raided Jefferson’s New Orleans home and found $90,000 of the bribe money stashed in containers in his refrigerator’s freezer. The recovered bills’ serial numbers matched those that the FBI had recorded.
In January 2006, Pfeffer pled guilty to bribery and confirmed to federal investigators that Jefferson was demanding bribes and kickbacks from iGate to conduct business in Nigeria. Pfeffer was sentenced to eight years in prison “on charges of conspiracy to commit bribery and aiding and abetting the solicitation of bribes by a member of Congress,” according to the Justice Department.
On May 3, Vernon Jackson pleaded guilty to paying bribes to Jefferson. In September 2006, he was sentenced to eighty-seven months in prison after pleading guilty to charges of “conspiracy to commit bribery and the payment of bribes to a public official.”
On May 20, 2006, armed with an eighty-three-page affidavit, more than a dozen FBI agents raided Jefferson’s congressional office. The agents were in the Rayburn House Office Building for about eighteen hours. This was the first known incidence of the FBI raiding the official office of an active member of Congress. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a Republican, was furious over the violation of the separation of the executive and legislative branches. He personally addressed his concerns with President George W. Bush. Hastert demanded the immediate return of papers removed from the Democratic Congressman’s office.
Citing a possible violation of “the constitutional principle of separation of the powers and the speech or debate clause,” Bush ordered the Justice Department to seal all records seized from Jefferson’s congressional office for a period of forty-five days. This would give congressional leaders and the Justice Department time to work out an agreement, Bush said.
The dispute landed in court, where US District Court Judge Thomas Hogan ruled the FBI search was legal. Hogan was not persuaded by the arguments put forth by Hastert and Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California that the independence of the legislative branch was violated by the search. “The Speech or Debate Clause does not make Members of Congress super-citizens, immune from criminal responsibility,” Hogan wrote in his opinion.
Voters of Louisiana’s 2nd congressional district didn’t seem very concerned that Jefferson was a subject of a very public corruption investigation. The voters easily reelected him in the 2006 election.
The New York Times refused to be persuaded by the overwhelming facts of the case, including a pair of guilty pleas and a conviction. The paper labeled the criminal investigation of Jefferson an “obvious partisan political target.” The Times also highlighted that Congressional leaders – Hastert and Majority Leader John Boehner – were angered that the FBI committed a violation of the separation of powers. The paper reported “the search set a dangerous precedent that could be used by future administrations to intimidate or harass a supposedly coequal branch of the government.”
In contrast to the Jefferson criminal investigation, The New York Times displayed no such outrage when the FBI seized the cell phone of Republican Congressman earlier this week. Perry, who the Times labeled an “ultraconservative,” has not been charged or even accused of any criminal acts. However, he has been in the cross-hairs of the House Democrats January 6th Committee due to his support of former President Donald Trump. The cell phone seizure appears to be a fishing expedition.
In June 2007, Jefferson was hit with sixteen criminal charges including bribery, conspiracy, and money laundering, among other charges that were detailed in a nearly one-hundred-page indictment. After a 2009 trial, Jefferson was convicted on eleven corruption charges. The jury recommended Jefferson forfeit $470,000 as ill-gotten gains and surrender millions of shares of company stock he acquired as part of his bribery scheme.
Jefferson was sentenced to thirteen years in prison. His appeal of his conviction was unsuccessful. However, Jefferson was released from prison in late 2017 after just sixty-five months in prison on the joint recommendation of prosecutors and defense attorneys. The sad irony is federal prosecutors believed the elected official who solicited bribes should serve less time in prison than the men who facilitated and paid the bribes.
In May 2018, former Congressman William Jefferson filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Mark Hyman is an Emmy award-winning investigative journalist. Follow him on Twitter, Gettr, and Parler at @markhyman, and on Truth Social at @markhyman81.
His books Washington Babylon: From George Washington to Donald Trump, Scandals That Rocked the Nation and Pardongate: How Bill and Hillary Clinton and their Brothers Profited from Pardons are on sale now (here and here).