From The Hill:

Itera is facing new questions this week after federal agents raided the company’s Florida office as well as the homes of Karen Weldon and Charles Sexton, her business partner and a longtime adviser to the embattled ten-term Republican, locked in the toughest re-election fight of his career. But despite Weldon’s public speculation about a politically motivated probe, one Democrat came to Itera’s defense yesterday.

“I only have good things to say about them,” said Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.), whose district includes Itera’s Jacksonville headquarters. Brown, who joined Weldon on the 2002 codel to Russia, led a later celebration of Itera’s 10th anniversary in Florida that featured entertainment from Oscar winner Isaac Hayes and two Russian pop singers.

Brown said she was “really surprised by the nature of the investigation” of Weldon’s links with Itera and two other foreign clients of his daughter, which Brown said she first heard of through news reports this week. “I just don’t know how whether or not a person had a [lobbying] client would generate that kind of response.” [...]

Itera did not return a request for comment on its meetings with Weldon and other lawmakers. Itera’s lobbying stable includes Brown’s daughter, Shantrel Brown Fields, who signed a deal in February for her firm, Alcalde & Fay, to represent the company on “international debt issues.”

How funny is that? The only Democrat with something good to say also has a daughter working for them. Of course, Weldon has a helluva lot more clout than she does. And I’m still wondering about my source’s insistance that Weldon owns some of the stock in the Russian oil company.

Anyway, Laura Rozen sheds even more light:

So what “additional information” might the Justice department have received in the spring that prompted the impaneling in May of a secret grand jury in Washington?
There are two clues offering two different answers. One clue appears at the very end of The Washington Post piece: Four Itera officers gave a total of $8,000 to Weldon’s campaign in late April. $4,000 came from a vice president of Itera named Theodoros Kavalieros and his family member Nikolaos Kavalieros, while $2,000 came from Itera’s U.S. director of government relations, Lazar “Lonya” Finker.

It’s not clear if all those who donated that day are U.S. citizens or U.S. residents. A new lobbyist for Itera, Alcalde-Fay’s Jennefer Hirshberg, told me her only contact at the company was Finker, and that she herself wasn’t sure of his citizenship. Calls to Finker and Itera’s Jacksonville offices were not answered.

What’s at issue here? Non-U.S. citizens and residents are not legally allowed to contribute to American politicians. “The legal regime that governs foreign nationals’ participation in U.S. political activities is much more strict than” those governing U.S. citizens, explains Washington attorney Brett Kappel. “And it falls under a much more serious criminal statute than the lobbying disclosure act.” In other words, if foreign nationals donated to Weldon on April 20, it would have been a criminal violation of the federal election campaign act.

But a Washington lobbying expert who asked to speak on background has another theory: someone cooperating with the Justice Department on another matter might have tipped them off to Weldon. That person: Jack Abramoff.

“I think that Abramoff told them that his Russian clients told him this Russian company [Itera] had an in with Weldon,” he said. “The info provided by Abramoff would have been sufficient for the FBI to get a warrant for the wiretaps.”

It should be recalled that Abramoff’s then-lobbying firm Preston Gates had among its clients another shady Russian energy firm, Nafta Sib. In February 1999, eleven months before Preston Gates’ political action committee contributed $500 to Weldon’s campaign, Weldon seemed to do Nafta Sib a favor. He entered praise of Nafta Sib and its chairman Alexander Koulakovsky into the Congressional Record. On the face of it, that potentially looks like the kind of arrangement engaged in by Representative Bob Ney of Ohio, who has just pled guilty to corruption charges. Abramoff might have been able to tell the Justice Department whether it actually was such an arrangement.