Stone Campaigning Against Special Interests, Lobbyists and Lewis

Eric Stone said he is challenging incumbent 41st District Congressman Jerry Lewis as a patriotic rather than a political gesture.
“I feel an atrocity  has been perpetrated against the American people through the channels of self serving special interests that dominate Congress and what goes into and what come out of it. Politicians pass the bill along to unsuspecting taxpayers. Enough is enough,” Stone said.
Lewis, who is now one of the senior members of Congress,  Stone said, like many other Republican office holders is masquerading as a responsible Republican while he and they are utilizing the machinery of government to enrich themselves and their cronies.
“I am a Republican. I stand for small government and fiscal responsibility, our two key points. Our existing Republican leadership body for the past 20 years has adhered to neither of the above. They are participating in the perpetration of the abandonment of the ideals of why people are Republicans,” Stone said.
Lewis’ involvement in a host of issues that either skirted the border or outright violated the law illustrate this issue, Stone said.
Beginning in the mid-2000s, the U.S. Attorney’s offices in both San Diego and Los Angeles took an interest in Lewis because of his association with two controversial former members of Congress, Randy “Duke” Cunningham and Bill Lowery, as well as votes and other actions he engaged in as chairman and later ranking member of House Appropriations and House Defense Appropriations committees.
Cunningham, who had compiled a  superb record as the first Navy ace in the Vietnam War during which he recorded five confirmed kills and was awarded the Navy Cross, two Silver stars and a Purple Heart, parlayed his military heroics into a 14-year career as a Congressman representing the 44th,  51st, and 50th California Congressional districts from 1991 until he resigned in disgrace in November 2005
Cunningham was felled by federal investigators’ discovery of bribes provided to him by defense contractor Brent Wilkes, owner of ACCS Inc. Wilkes and other businessman with federal defense projects paid Cunningham more than $2.4 million in bribes and provided him with lavish gifts and prostitutes during getaways to Hawaii and other exotic locales. In return, Cunningham steered Pentagon contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Wilkes and the congressman’s other benefactors.
One of those connected by investigators to Cunningham was Bill Lowery, a former Congressman from California’s 41st Congressional District who dropped out of the Republican primary and elective politics in 1992 when reapportionment following the 1990 census redrew Lowery’s residence in San Diego into the same congressional district, California’s 51st, into which Cunningham’s had been redrawn. Lowery parlayed his status as a former congressman to become one of the more successful lobbyists on Capitol Hill as a principal in the firm of Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White.
Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White represented not only defense contractors but other companies with federal contracts, and several governmental entities, agencies, municipalities and institutions that had billions of dollars riding on decisions made by Congress.  Lowery relied upon his friendship with both  Cunningham and Lewis, as well as other Republican lawmakers, in swaying legislation and thereby proving his worth to Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White’s clients.
Lewis, who was initially elected to Congress in 1978, was elevated to the chairmanship of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee in 1999 and then became chairman of the House Appropriations committee in 2005.
While Lewis was chairing both of those congressional institutions, Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White provided Lewis and his Future Leaders political action committee with over $760,000. Lowery alone provided $480,000 to  Lewis’ Future Leaders PAC.
In addition, Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White’s clients donated over $2 million to Lewis’ campaign fund and his PAC.
In the same time frame, the firm of Copeland, Lowery, Jacquez, Denton & White earned millions of dollars in fees from these clients. Lewis, by virtue of his control over the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and later the House Appropriations Committee, directed hundreds of millions of dollars to Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White’s clients.
Lewis accomplished this diversion of public funds to his political donors and Copeland, Lowery, Jacquez, Denton & White’s clients through the practice of congressional earmarking. An earmark creates a requirement that a percentage of an appropriation be committed toward a specific expenditure. Earmarking bypasses traditionally established budgetary  procedures and avoids competitive bidding or awarding requirements.
Two of Lewis’ former staff members, Letitia White and Jeff Shockey, went to work for Copeland, Lowery Jacquez Denton & White straightaway after leaving the direct employ of his congressional office, and within a few years were earning over $1 million per year. White’s husband, Richard White, who was already working as a lobbyist, similarly saw a marked increase in  his income when he switched to representing defense firms almost exclusively.  That newfound success was brought on in large part because of Richard White’s entrée, through his wife, to Lewis.
A survey of the public record shows:  California State University San Bernardino received $62 million in earmarked federal money through Lewis’ intercession after it retained Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White; that the city of Redlands received $26 million in earmarked federal funds of a total of $36.7 million in total pork after it hired Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White; the town of Yucca Valley retained Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White in January 2003 and since that time received $4.4 million in federal funding earmarked or otherwise engineered by Lewis; the city of San Diego received $960,000 in federal money Lewis had a hand in earmarking after the city of San Diego retained Copeland Lowery Jacquez  Denton & White; the city of San Bernardino has received more than $1.2 million in funds Lewis earmarked after it began paying Copeland Lowery Jacquez  Denton & White to lobby on its behalf; and San Diego State University pulled in some $6 million in federal funds earmarked for studying methods for converting existing military technology to civilian use after it began paying Copeland Lowery Jacquez  Denton & White a yearly stipend.
The University of Redlands, which has named a science wing after Lewis and paid Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White $680,000, received $22.5 million in earmarked funds from Lewis.
Isothermal Systems and Tessera Technologies co-ventured on a defense project in 2003 and 2004, receiving a $4.5 federal contract earmarked through Lewis’ efforts Isolthermal was represented by Letitia White. Tessera’s lobbyist was Letitia White’s husband, Richard, who received $300,000 from Tessera between 2003 and 2005.
Cunningham was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Diego, led by former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam. Ultimately, Cunningham resigned from office in November 2005 and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors as part of a plea arrangement that netted him an eight-year prison term. After the focus of Lam and her minions alighted on Cunningham and widened to take in Wilkes and a host of other federal contractors who had been Cunningham’s benefactors, investigative attention consequently settled on Lowery and his lobbying firm.
That scrutiny quickly prompted an admission in June 2005 from the reporting officer for Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White that between 1998 and 2005 the lobbying firm had failed to disclose at least $755,000 in income from 17 nonprofit organizations and governmental agencies and entities as well as $635,000 from other clients. Later that month, the firm of Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White dissolved.
San Bernardino County, which had been a primary recipient of pork barrel funding engineered by Lewis over the years, was among Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White’s clients. And when that firm folded in the glare of negative publicity relating to Lowery’s close affiliation with Cunningham, San Bernardino County did not miss a beat and immediately retained Innovative Federal Strategies, to which the lobbying firm had changed its name in 2006, following the departure of its Democrat-affiliated members.
Lam’s investigation of Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White soon widened to include Lewis. As the head of  the federal prosecution unit in California’s Southern District, Lam at first coordinated with and then handed off that phase of the investigation pertaining to Lewis to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, which was headed by U.S. Attorney Debra Yang. Yang’s bailiwick was California’s Central District, which includes Lewis’ 41st Congressional District.
In relatively short order Yang and her staff in Los Angeles had confirmed Lewis had done yeoman’s work in coordinating the earmarking of bills to favor Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White’s clients. Moving beyond that, they learned Lewis had not always laundered the hefty political contributions he had received from governmental contractors though the Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White lobbing firm. Indeed, research of the public record demonstrates Lewis had wielded his power to salt federal legislation with funding that enriched a multitude of other individuals as well as corporate and public entities who had come through with large donations to Lewis’ election campaign or political action committee.
Orincon, a defense contractor specializing in systems integration and information technology bought out by Lockheed Martin in 2003, increased its $10 million federal contract in 1999 to a $52 million contract in 2003, while providing Lewis and his campaign fund with a total of  $102,000 from 1998 until it was purchased by Lockheed Martin.
Over the objections of generals and procurement staff at the Pentagon, Lewis managed to provide The General Atomic Corporation with at least $455.9 million in funding toward the production and upgrades of the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle and its follow-on versions. General Atomics, in addition to retaining Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White, gave $15,000 to Lewis and his Future Leaders PAC and provided over $12,000 toward travel lodging and accommodation of Lewis and his entourage. The company fielded the costs of and hosted a fundraiser for Lewis at which the congressman hauled in another $23,000.
Nicholas Karangelen and his wife provided Lewis with $72,000 in political money between 2003 and 2006. Between 2002 and 2006, Lewis ushered through Congress $23.6 million in earmarks for Trident, a company in Virginia owned by Karengelen that supplies hardware and software systems for military and commercial use. Lewis was introduced to Karengelen by Letitia White. Trident has paid Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White $340,000.
Between 2001 and 2006, Lewis earmarked more than $90 million in funding that went to Environmental Systems Research Institute, owned by Jack and Laura Dangermond of Redlands, for work varying from designing computer programs to fight fires in the San Bernardino Mountains, to running logistical mapping for the Iraq War, to mapping the local flood planes, and performing computer-assisted mapping that assisted in the New Orleans reconstruction. The Dangermonds have contributed $32,900 to Lewis and his political action committee since 2000 and Environmental Systems Research Institute has paid the Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White firm $320,000 since 1998.
In 2001, the Dangermonds donated to the city of Redlands 41 acres of property they owned that was adjacent to Lewis’ home. Covenants made pursuant to the donation stipulated conditions that would greatly enhance the value of Lewis’ property.
Perhaps the most egregious abuse of Lewis’ power occurred in 2003. Cerberus Capital Management, a hedge fund, pumped $132,500 into his congressional campaign fund and his political action committee and Lewis, then the chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, restored $160 million in funding to a defense program in which Cerberus was the sole financier.
Lewis restored that funding after he and a slew of other lawmakers had openly expressed doubts over the wisdom of allowing Cerberus-backed WorldCom to participate in an $8.8 billion secure computer network and communications program for the Navy and Marines. When Cerberus handed over more than $100,000 in political cash, however, Lewis made an abrupt turnaround.
Cerberus, owned more than $140 million in stock and bonds of the bankrupt telecommunications giant WorldCom and was functioning under the corporate aegis of MCI. A court-ordered accounting of WorldCom’s books, showed the evaporation of more than $10 billion in capital and assets in the late 1990s and early 2000s and eventually netted a 25-year prison term for WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers.
With cost overruns dogging WorldCom’s end of the $8.8 million project, Lewis and other members of Congress made the first move in pulling the plug on MCI. A vote taken on May 16, 2003 by the House Defense Appropriations  Subcommittee cut ten percent of the Navy project’s $1.6 billion budget for the 2003-2004 fiscal year. That vote was aimed squarely at MCI’s portion of the operation.
Meanwhile, Cerberus, using the services of a hastily formed lobbying team which included Laurence Harris; former Utah senator Jake Garn, retired Marine colonel John Garrett; and former House Armed Services Committee staff member Marcus Dunn, opened up a dialogue with Lewis.
On June 16 2003, the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, with Lewis in the lead, undid the May 16 vote, passing a resolution to maintain the full funding for the Navy-Marine Corps network. Ten days later the full House Appropriations Committee confirmed that approval.
On July 7, 2003 Cerberus executives and their spouses, their lawyers and business partners, along with Harris, Garn, Garrett and Dunn feted Lewis with a gala fund-raising dinner in Manhattan at which they presented Lewis’ Future Leaders PAC with just over $110,000. Over the next two weeks Cerberus executives and various of their associates provided Lewis’ PAC with another $22,500.
On July 8, 2003, the full House passed a defense spending bill that left the $160 million for a Navy-Marine computer system intact.
In the late spring of 2006, Tom Casey, the former owner of Audre Recognition Systems Inc, which produces and markets automated document conversion software, went public with an account of how, when he had been seeking a federal contract for his company,  Lewis instructed him to hire the Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton firm to lobby on his company’s behalf.
According to Casey, Lewis also asked him to arrange stock options for Bill Lowery and to disguise them by  issuing them in Canada under a false name.
For his cooperation with Lewis, Casey said,   he was allowed by Letitia White, who at that time was working in Lewis’ office, to compose the language of an appropriation earmark.
In June of 2006, Yang and her team of prosecutors and FBI agents working out of Los Angeles obtained search warrants for the cities of Redlands, Loma Linda, Yucca  Valley, Highland, Twentynine Palms. San Bernardino and Riverside counties, California State University at San Bernardino, the University of Redlands and Environmental Systems Research Institute to obtain all documents in those entities’ possession relating to contracts with Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White for lobbying services.
The issuance of those subpoenas at once telegraphed the intention of the U.S. Attorney’s office toward Lewis. The congressman, using $200,000 from his political war chest, retained the high powered law firm of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, which boasts offices in both Los Angeles and Washington D.C., as well as in New York, London, Paris, Brussels, Munich, San Francisco, Dallas, Denver and Orange County.  In the next nine months, Lewis used another $803,000 of his campaign funds to keep attorneys at work upon his defense. Available federal disclosure forms show Lewis has spent upwards of $1.6 million laying the groundwork for his defense, even before he has been criminally charged, .
Among the formidable ranks of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher’s more than 800 lawyers are Ted Olson, the former solicitor general, assistant attorney general and a heavy Republican political donor in his own right; Robert C. Bonner, a former U.S. attorney, former Drug Enforcement Agency administrator and former U.S. Customs commissioner; and Eugene Scalia, the son of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.
When Lewis retained Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in 2006, he was, by virtue of his chairmanship of the House Appropriations Committee, the fourth most powerful member of the House of Representatives and arguably the law firm’s single most important client. Members of the firm were furiously casting about for a way to stymie the investigation and eventual prosecution Yang was relentlessly angling the wheels of justice toward.
Beginning in the late summer of 2006, headhunters employed by Gibson Dunn & Crutcher targeted Yang, a recently-divorced mother of three, with offers of a partnership in the firm and a sizeable signing bonus that would dwarf her $148,500 yearly salary as U.S. Attorney. After much going back and forth, that offer was firmed up to status as a full partner in the firm, a $1.5 million signing fee and a guarantee of $500,000 in yearly income thereafter. Lewis has not been charged with any crime, although the Justice Department maintains an open file on the matter.
The way in which lobbyists have come to dominate the American political landscape is, Stone said, “a corruption of our government and the sacred ideals of the Constitution. Mr. Lewis’s corruption is astounding but it is sadly a tiny fraction that gets swallowed up in  comparison to the big picture. The lobbying interests, the special interests have a reported budget of over $4 billion. You can look at it as an average of $40,000 per day per congressman for every day they are in session to continue the results the lobbyists get. We need to fix the whole system. I would prefer people would focus on the bigger picture. It is not just Jerry.”
Stone said, “These investigations dragging out for years bring into question what is really going on. With one of the federal prosecutors who was going after him having been dismissed and the other one being hired away by the law firm representing him, even more questions are raised as to his activity in office.  But with all of these questions, it’s important for people not to get cynical and lose sight of the bigger picture. The issues concerning Mr. Lewis are much smaller than the bigger issues facing this nation. I am concerned about the apparent illegalities he engaged in and the corruption of his office. I was motivated to run for office out of those concerns and the whole culture that it grew out of, which is the  power  the special interests have demonstrated to push their agendas through regardless of who is in office. The story of how the U.S. Attorney was dismissed by President [George] Bush was interesting as were the logistics of how this investigation was shut down but  I don’t want my focus to be on that. I want my focus to be on moving the country away from all of that.  When you focus in on what sort of advantage Mr. Lewis has taken of the people who voted for him and all the details, the story about what really needs to be done seems to get dropped.
“I want my campaign to focus on the issues that are important to this district and who my constituents are going to be,” Stone said. “Look at the numbers we are facing. They’re atrocious.  Look at the underfunded social security program, Medicare, military pensions. With the national debt, each household owes $600,000. Every household! Some people are working. Others aren’t working. Others are too old to work or too young to work. There’s no way we can pay for this pending debt. The leaders we have entrusted with our government are leading us into a catastrophe.  If everyone looks at the situation they cannot help but feel as strongly as I do and I am the only Republican alternative to Jerry Lewis. I am a true Republican alternative who is dedicated to limited government and fiscal responsibility. People that feel powerless in the face of this can turn to me and I promise I will not sit still in the face of the special interests and their political machinery.”
Stone sought to reassure those who might object to his lack of experience in the political arena.
“It is going to take somebody with no past political career to be jeopardized to stand up for government that is responsible to the people and against the system of government we have today serving the interests of  the few at the expense of the many and the unborn,” he said.
The expectation or hope of the county’s voters that Lewis will somehow rise to the occasion and take the bold action needed to redress the situation is unrealistic, Stone said.
“You have to be delusional to expect from him new tricks and new approaches to longstanding problems that he is responsible for having created,” Stone said. “His track record speaks for itself. In this county we are facing not only the highest unemployment rate in the state but in the country. The jobs lost to competitors overseas could have been redirected into our district. I can think of little worse than an able bodied man or woman needing or wanting to provide for their family and having no legitimate opportunity available. We need to eliminate barriers that are creating time delays and costing entrepreneurs and pushing employers away. We need rather to entice them to do business in our district.”
In this respect, Stone said, “Public/private partnerships are one avenue. The other is to incentivize job creation by offering small businesses offers they would be foolish to ignore. If elected, I would make job number one bringing jobs home to our district. Number two would be to ultimately reduce federal spending and at the same time redirect more of our fair share of federal spending to our district. I want to serve in Congress to be a catalyst to demonstrate that responsible government can be of benefit to the people.”
Stone said he would bring his nearly thirty years of business experience working “in corporate America and financial institutions and as an independent business person” to the role of Congressman.
Stone, 48, was born in Manhattan, New York and attended high school in East Bruswick, New Jersey.  He attended Middlesex County College and Cal State Fullerton. He served in the National Guard. He is now self employed with real estate projects. He is divorced with two daughters.