Harry Reid's financial shenanigans have caused a bigger stumble than he first thought. After hanging up on an AP reporter who asked about the undisclosed transaction that hid his partnership with a controversial Las Vegas attorney, Reid has sounded a much more humble tone. He now promises to cooperate with the Ethics Committee on the Patrick Lane LLC land deal that netted him a 175% profit on his six-year investment in real estate, during a time when he pushed hard for freeing federal land in Clark County to spur development.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal sounds unconvinced in its editorial today:

The Associated Press on Wednesday reported that our own Sen. Reid may have violated Senate rules by failing to report the 2001 transfer of land he owned "to a partnership in which he maintained a personal stake."

Three years later, Sen. Reid made $700,000 when the partnership sold the real estate.

To make matters worse for the senator, the deal was apparently put together by a longtime friend and casino lawyer whose name has come up previously in organized crime investigations and a political bribery trial this summer. ...

All this raises the question: How does a savvy political operative such as Sen. Reid make a bush-league error and find himself ankle deep in the manure pit? For the past few years, Sen. Reid has been railing about a Republican "culture of corruption" -- and has eagerly sought to exploit the Foley mess for his party's political gain. Oops.

Perhaps after Sen. Reid scrapes the dung off his shoes, he'll tend to the egg on his face.

He has more to explain than just this land deal. He should account for all his efforts to strip away federal land in Nevada, pressuring government regulators to bypass environmental laws, in order to allow developers to get their hands on the land -- developers who coincidentally hired lobbying firms that prominently employed Reid's sons. At least, Reid wants us to believe in that coincidence.

This story has not yet run its course. Reid's partner, Jay Brown, had some involvement in a bribery case that resulted in two convictions for corruption for Clark County commissioners, and the same commissioners voted earlier to allow commercial/retail development on the Patrick Lane LLC properties. Reid purchased the properties from Fred Lessman, Daniel Kramer, and Dale and Isaac Sigal in two chunks for the $400,000 initial investment. Lessman, the president of Perma-Built Homes and an obviously interested player in residential real estate, was a big supporter of Dario Herrera in 2001, Herrera being one of the two corrupt commissioners convicted in the Jay Brown case, and 2001 being when the zoning decision was made that benefited Patrick Lane LLC. Daniel Kramer also contributed money to Herrera in 2001 and early 2002. Herrera got 50 months in prison for his corruption. (The Sigals apparently have never made political contributions.)

That's a lot of coincidences surrounding the zoning decision that enriched Harry Reid. The Ethics Committee should be looking into all of those dots surrounding the corruption on the Clark County Board of Commissioners and Harry Reid's reluctance to reveal his business relationship with Jay Brown. I'll have more to say on this tomorrow.

UPDATE: Patterico is disappointed with the LA Times' coverage on this story. It's a shame, because the LAT has done excellent reporting on Reid in the past, as late as last August.

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Harry Reid's financial shenanigans have caused a bigger stumble than he first thought. After hanging up on an AP reporter who asked about the undisclosed transaction that hid his partnership with a controversial Las Vegas attorney, Reid has sounded a [Read More]

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