McCain Did Not Disclose Keating Business Deal To Investigators

November 2, 2008
Sam Stein-Huff

The New Republic published an explosive story Saturday evening detailing how John McCain, in all likelihood, leaked information to investigators of the Keating Five scandal that was designed to help his image at the expense of the other four Senators involved.

If the allegation is true -- and TNR makes a healthy case as to its veracity -- it would mean that McCain violated Senate rules and could have been expelled from that body.

"All five senators -- including McCain -- had testified under oath and under the U.S. penal code that the leaks did not come from their camps," Sahil Mahtani reports. "The leaks were also prohibited by rules of the Senate Ethics Committee; according to the rules of the Senate, anyone caught leaking such information could face expulsion from the body."

But this is not be the only instance in which McCain defied the rules of the Senate when seeking to absolve himself of any wronging in the Keating affair. Public records in Arizona reveal that the Senator was also dishonest in discussing the extent of financial transactions he and his family had with the disgraced Savings and Loans chief.

In a three-and-a-half hour interview with investigators on February 13, 1990, McCain told the Ethics Committee that "other than the Fountain Square project [a property deal in which Keating and McCain's family were jointly invested] there were no other financial dealings between him or his family and ACC [American Continental Corporation]."

This, it seems, was not true.

In 1983, the company owned by the McCain family -- specifically his wife Cindy and father-in-law Jim Hensley -- bought a property in Mesa, Arizona, owned by ACC, only to sell it back two months later.

According to property records (pdf), on May 26 of that year, Keating's ACC "conveyed" Lot 188 of Laguna Shores Unit 8 to the Hensley/McCain's Western Leasing Company for the price of $75,000. On July 21, 1983, Western Leasing Company sold the lot right back to ACC for the same exact price.