Blitzer identified Dem lawmaker whose home was raided, but did not ID several Republicans


Discussing the raid on Sen. Ted Stevens' (R-AK) house by FBI and IRS agents, on the July 30 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, host Wolf Blitzer noted that there have been “raids on other lawmakers' homes,” adding: “William Jefferson, a Democratic Congressman from Louisiana, what did-- they found, what, $90,000 in cash in his freezer. Randy 'Duke' Cunningham out in California, he's serving jail time right now. We could go down the list.” But while Blitzer identified Jefferson as a Democrat, he did not identify Cunningham as a Republican.

As The New York Times noted, in April 2007 the FBI raided Rep. John J. Doolittle's (R-CA) home and later “an insurance office owned by the wife of Representative Rick Renzi, an Arizona Republican.” As Media Matters for America noted, in October 2006 federal agents raided the homes of then-Rep. Curt Weldon's (R-PA) daughter and her business partner, as well as four additional locations, as part of what The New York Times described as an “intensifying corruption inquiry” into whether Weldon improperly assisted their company, Solutions North America Inc.

As Media Matters noted, on the May 3 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, Blitzer observed that Washington is “no stranger to sex scandals,” then provided viewers with examples of scandals involving only Democrats.

During the broadcast, Stevens was repeatedly identified on-screen and by CNN reporters as a Republican.

From the 7 p.m. ET hour of the July 30 edition of CNN's The Situation Room:

JEFFREY TOOBIN (CNN legal analyst): Wolf, the one thing I can assure you is, the U.S. attorney in Alaska did not make this decision alone. To seek and obtain a search warrant against any member of Congress -- but especially someone who has been in the U.S. Senate since 1968 -- is of enormous significance, and it certainly had to go to the top of the Justice Department. Alberto Gonzales had to approve it, or his designee. The director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, had to approve it. They would not have done -- taken such an extreme step without approval all the way up the chain of the command and, one has to conclude, without a serious reason for doing it.

BLITZER: Because we remember the raids on other lawmakers' homes. William Jefferson, a Democratic congressman from Louisiana, what did they -- they found, what, $90,000 in cash in his freezer. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, out in California, he's serving jail time right now. We could go down the list.

Several of these lawmakers, they were investigated. Their homes were searched. We don't know how serious this investigation is of Ted Stevens' home, but in and of itself, the decision being made to launch this kind of investigation and to actually go and execute a search warrant in Senator Stevens' home, that is something that is extraordinary, Jeff.