Slow cooking the books

We've long known they can't handle our money, now we have proof they can't handle their own.

WASHINGTON — Hundreds of thousands of dollars are missing and presumed stolen from the chief fund-raising arm of House Republicans, according to party officials who described the findings of emergency internal audits.

The financial records of the group, the National Republican Congressional Committee, may also have been falsified for several years, Republican officials said. The campaign committees of several Republican lawmakers may also have been victims of a scam that is now under criminal investigation by the F.B.I.

The audits were ordered after the abrupt departure several weeks ago of Christopher J. Ward, who had been treasurer of the committee. Lawmakers said that Mr. Ward, who served a similar role for dozens of individual members of Congress and their political committees, is the focus of the F.B.I.’s criminal investigation.

The committee has acknowledged publicly that it was aware of “irregularities in our financial audit process” and that it had called in the F.B.I. in February because “these irregularities may include fraud.”

But until now the committee has not acknowledged that any money was missing from its bank accounts or that the financial irregularities might extend beyond the national committee to the campaign funds of individual Republican lawmakers who also worked with Mr. Ward, a longtime party operative.

[...]

Mr. Ward had been treasurer of the national Republican committee since 2003. He had also been a partner in a private campaign consulting firm, Political Compliance Services, that gained notice in the 2004 presidential campaign because of its work on behalf of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that ran advertisements that criticized the military record of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee.

How has this carload of clowns had such a stranglehold on power in this country for so long?