Once upon a time, before he was a senator, X worked for a law firm that helped a shady developer score $43 million in government funding.  When X left the firm and became a legislator, he helped the developer get another $14 million in taxpayer funds, with $855,000 in fees for his former boss and the developer.

In return, the slumlord funneled at least a quarter-million dollars to Senator X’s campaigns.  He also enabled the Senator to buy a $1.56-million mansion by purchasing an adjacent lot the seller also owned and insisted on selling at the same time.

The developer had already been indicted on 16 counts of fraud and extortion.

After receiving $1,500 from a radical priest, the senator scored $225,000 for the priest’s church.  For $5,000 in donations, $1,000 each from straw donors, he steered $75,000 to a dubious charity.  In exchange for at least $2,300, Senator X helped an Iraqi official land a lucrative contract to train security personnel.

When he was elected to the U.S. Senate, X’s wife’s salary as VP for community relations at a prestigious university hospital was bumped up by nearly $200,000 to $317,000.  Despite two Ivy-League degrees, Mrs. X was unable to write a coherent sentence in English.  This was not a problem, as her chief responsibility was to oversee a program that steered unprofitable patients to other hospitals in the community.  The position had not existed before Mrs. X was appointed, and it was terminated when she resigned.  The senator later scored $12 million for the hospital.

Cut to the present. 

Senator Y accepted $300,000 in donations and some plane rides from a doctor on whose behalf he intervened with the Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency.

Of course, selling their services for contributions is what members of Congress do for a living.  No senator or representative is listed by charitynavigator.org.  Still, these cases were a bit egregious.

Earlier this month, Senator Y was indicted for bribery.  Senator X returned some of the campaign contributions and confessed that his behavior was “boneheaded,” but was never charged with any crime.

Both men are Democrats.  What’s the difference? 

Senator X was The Great Black Hope, the multicultural reconciler. 

Senator Y opposes a deal with a radical Islamacist terrorist state, the new Middle East partner of now President X.

Meanwhile the philanthropic developer and another of his beneficiaries, Governor Z, sit in federal penitentiaries.  They have some interesting information about X, and maybe we’ll hear from them, along with certain Hawaiian officials, after January 20, 2017.