Senator Ted Stevens Dodd?

On October 16, 2008, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens testified as follows in his corruption trial.

Alaska Senator Ted Stevens testified at his trial on charges of hiding more than $250,000 in gifts that he never intended to lie on his Senate financial disclosure forms and thought they were accurate.

Immediately after taking the witness stand today, Stevens answered, ``Yes, sir,'' when asked by defense lawyer Brendan Sullivan whether he believed the Senate forms at the heart of the case were correct when he signed them.

Asked if he ever intended to file a false statement, the senator said, ``No I did not.''

You see, the Senator was charged with submitting false statements on his U.S. Senate disclosure forms.

Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd is required to submit the same financial disclosure forms. And in a stunning reversal, late Friday he admitted to the Connecticut press that his Irish vacation estate was worth three times what he had been telling the U.S. Senate.

A new appraisal of the Irish cottage owned by Sen. Christopher Dodd concludes that it is worth about three times as much as Dodd has been reporting on his financial disclosure forms.The new value of the cottage, on Inishnee island in County Galway, is $658,000, according to Dodd's 2008 financial disclosure form released Friday.The two-page appraisal was done by the same man who did the original one in 2002 when the 1,200-square-foot cottage was valued at about $190,000.The new appraisal comes two years into a historic crash in property values in Ireland, which suggests that it might have been worth even more in recent years when Dodd never reported its value at more than $250,000 in annual Senate financial disclosures. 

Every year Dodd submitted a financial disclosure form to the Senate. And every year he submitted a demonstrably false statement as to the value of his Irish vacation home.  He has yet to produce the alleged 2002 appraisal setting the value at a risibly inadequate number.

I'm not going to think people like me got Dodd off the dime.  And even the scandal about how Dodd obtained and financed this house might not have caused the belated disclosure.  No, what prompted this is to pay the nation's bills the Irish Republic is about to reinstitute a tax on residential property, and this appraisal was a pre-emptive strike against the Galway County assessor coming out with an even higher number right before the '10 election.

But, my question is this: How many times did Chris Dodd submit materially false information on his finances similar to the false information submitted by Ted Stevens?

Chris Dodd pretends he was unaware of the Irish property boom. And he claims to be an expert on global finance. Doesn't pass the smell test, Chris.  He knew these numbers were wrong and submitted them anyway.

I doubt the Eric Holder Justice Department is going to rattle the cage of the President's point man on nationalization of banks, car companies and health care. (Why not?....politicised justice?) It would be fun to hear not old stories of Daddy at Nuremberg, but hearing this guy use the "Ted Stevens defense" on the stand. 

He didn't mean to lie on the form. It just turned out that way.