WASHINGTON-The House Commerce Committee last week referred its final report on the Portals investigation to the Justice Department.
The year-long investigation of the 20-year, $400 million lease with the Portals, the new headquarters of the Federal Communications Commission, implicates close associates of Vice President Al Gore with an alleged influence-peddling operation designed to secure favorable treatment on a federal lease.
The Gore ties include Franklin Haney, a Tennessee commercial real estate developer who recently was indicted by a federal grand jury as part of Justice’s campaign finance probe; Peter Knight, a lobbyist who managed the 1996 Clinton-Gore presidential campaign; and James Sasser, a former Democratic senator of Tennessee who now serves as U.S. ambassador to China.
“The findings … reveal that Mr. Haney paid his representatives millions of dollars in fees upon the successful closing of the Portals transaction, in which the federal government agreed to specific lease changes sought by Mr. Haney as a condition for his financing of the Portals building.”
Performance payments in federal leasing is illegal.
