Among thieves

What? A swift boater dishonest?

The former treasurer of a Republican Congressional fund-raising committee may have stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars by submitting elaborately forged audit reports for five years using the letterhead of a legitimate auditing firm, a lawyer for the committee said Thursday.

Robert K. Kelner, a lawyer with Covington & Burling, who was brought in by the National Republican Congressional Committee to investigate accounting irregularities, said a new audit showed that the committee had $740,000 less on hand than it believed. Mr. Kelner said it was unclear whether that amount represented money siphoned off by the former treasurer, Christopher J. Ward.

[...]

Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, its chairman, briefed the Republican Congressional leadership on Thursday. In a statement, Mr. Cole said he had told them that “the information we have today indicates we have been deceived and betrayed for a number of years by a highly respected and trusted individual.”

Mr. Ward was named treasurer of the national Republican committee in 2003 after serving for several years as an assistant treasurer. He had also been a partner in a political consulting firm, Political Compliance Services, that worked in 2004 on behalf of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group behind advertisements attacking the military record of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee.

The thing is, the traits that make a SBVTer “highly respected and trusted” in Republican circles are exactly the same traits that make him neither respectable nor trustworthy. GOP insiders must know that they’re dealing with basically dishonest people, so they shouldn’t act surprised when shit like this happens. Remember the lessons your parents taught you about the people you surround yourself with? Well, guess what? Thieves steal and liars lie. The only difference is now they’re doing it to you. That’s what you get for surrounding yourself with such marginal motherfuckers to help you play your dirty pool. That’s what you get for trusting a bullshit artist with your money.

And this is the party of “fiscal responsibility.”