MARK KIESLING: Visclosky should foot his legal bill

Just so I have this straight, the feds are allowing U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky to use campaign funds in his legal defense of an FBI investigation into his acceptance of certain large campaign contributions.

Visclosky, D-Ind., has had records and staffers subpoenaed, and the office of his largest campaign contributor was raided by the FBI last fall in an ongoing probe into whether he (and others) may have improperly accepted contributions in exchange for favors to the contributors.

Visclosky maintains he has done nothing wrong, and that is a presumption we should all have of him. This is America, even if you are a congressman, and that's the way we do things. And he has not been charged with anything, nor has he personally received a subpoena.

But the fact remains that there is an investigation into the main contributor to his campaign over the last three years, and that he has voluntarily returned $18,000 of its money.

Yet he is being allowed to use his campaign money, much of which came from the lobbying organization that is under FBI investigation, to defend himself.

On June 19, the Federal Election Commission voted 6-0 to allow Visclosky to use those same campaign funds that are the object of the FBI investigation to pay his legal team.

For those just joining this saga, Visclosky is a low-profile congressman from Merrillville with 25 years of service, which means he has been in D.C. long enough to get a nice job like being on the House Appropriations Committee, which in turn means he is one of the people who decides where America spends its tax money.

In short, he is one of the most powerful people in Washington whom no one has ever heard of.

That all changed in November when the FBI raided the Virginia headquarters of The PMA Group, a now-defunct but once top-flight lobbying firm that employed a former Visclosky chief of staff. It was the congressman's top contributor and donated half a million to him and two other congressmen.

In turn, PMA clients ended up becoming the beneficiaries of so-called earmarks, money spent on them courtesy of bills or amendments sponsored by Visclosky. Several of them ended up in the Purdue Technology Center in Merrillville, which was built with money secured by Visclosky.

It is this appearance of pay-to-play politics that has attracted federal attention, and which the FEC noted has been reported on extensively in the media.

I'm going to go with innocent until proven guilty. I think Visclosky has served Northwest Indiana well in his quarter-century, and I am not willing to rush to judgment now.

But I'd still rather he spent his own money to defend himself instead of relying on the largesse of those very people whom he may have improperly taken the cash from in the first place.

The opinions are solely those of the writer. He can be reached at markk@nwitimes.com or (219) 933-4170.