…or so claims his Congressional opponent, reacting to the apparent disclosure of hitherto unseen ABSCAM FBI tapes in which Murtha allegedly makes a $50,000 bribery deal. Video here.
I remember reading about ABSCAM in my grandmother’s Readers’ Digest. I think it was the first sting operation I’d ever heard of (hey, I must have been all of eleven years old), and I was enthralled.
At some point I’ll sit down and watch the full 53 minutes of video. It’s unclear from Murtha’s opponent’s writeup whether the newly released “complete videotape” of Murtha has anything new to contradict what seems to have been an indication by Murtha that he wasn’t interested “at this point” in the $50,000, according to the Wikipedia writeup on ABSCAM. Perhaps that was just because he wanted it laundered through some banks before he touched it, but in any event he wasn’t among those prosecuted.
So even though we know the guy’s a crook, I’m not sure this “newly released videotape” has anything truly significant to add to the old evidence against him.
Anyway, yours truly promises to spend 53 minutes of his life examining this grainy undercover footage in the next few days. Revelations and smoking guns, if any, shall be reported in this space.
Any of y’all can’t wait and wanna watch it for me, go right ahead! Just be sure to enlighten us all in the comments.
Murtha, the consummate weasel, don’t take a bribe in the video, he (rather obviously) postpones takeing the offered money into the future. He was very cagey, wanting to “test” his bribing contact before climing on the moolah train.
He set himself up to later claim that he could have been working undercover to snag the bribe-giver.
There’s no legal case against him for taking a bribe, but he obviously failed to report the incident, so could definitely be said to be considering taking the bribe in the future.