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[spindrifter]

FBI's Sham Candidate Crawled Under W.Va.'s Political Rock

By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 2, 2005; Page A01

The three men were sitting in a car outside a rural elementary school in West Virginia when the candidate handed over $2,000 in cash and said, "Buy all the votes you can."

Here's what made it unusual: Although Thomas E. Esposito was on the ballot as a candidate for the state House of Delegates, he wasn't really running for office.

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The whole affair landed yesterday in a Charleston courtroom, where a defense attorney cried foul, accusing the government of "outrageous" conduct and of violating the sanctity of the election process. He said the charade robbed 2,175 citizens who voted for Esposito -- unaware he wasn't for real -- of a constitutional right.

But a federal judge sided with the government, ruling after a 30-minute hearing that corruption in Logan County had been endemic "for longer than living memory" and that the bogus election campaign might have been the only way to root it out.

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"The conduct of the United States in carrying out the undercover investigation was necessary and proper to root out systemic corruption," wrote.

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Judge Faber noted yesterday that previous rulings have held that for a government investigative action to be improper it "must be so outrageous as to shock the conscience of the court."

"Here, in looking at the totality of the circumstances," he wrote, "the court's conscience is not shocked in the slightest."

During the hearing, Campbell said, the judge asked him: What else could the Justice Department have done?

"Not violate the constitutional rights of the voters of Logan County," he said he replied.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/01/AR2005120101724.html

We pay companies like the Lincoln Group massive amounts of money for "news work" overseas, some dare call it propaganda, to shift public policy opinion and we pay guys to run as fake candidates in U.S. elections. Heckufajob, *Co.