Ernest Newton is a jerk, a scumbag, and a fraud.
His shamelessness knew no bounds and he had no problem pulling the race card for his own purposes. THe Hartford Courant sheds new light how low this person (if you can call him that) would go to fill his own pockets.
Disgusting.In a blistering memo filed in court Thursday, federal prosecutors portray former state Sen. Ernest Newton as a shameless hustler who worked for mobsters, shook down social service agencies, stole from his own campaign treasury and had the audacity to demand a raise after obtaining a no-show job through the city of Bridgeport.
Perhaps as astonishing as the criminal behavior charged against Newton are the paltry sums he allegedly received from the people to whom he is accused of selling the services of his Senate office. He collected $5,000 from one constituent, $1,750 from another and routinely pilfered sums in the hundreds of dollars from his campaign to pay personal expenses, the memo says, and he asked the mob to foot the bill when he needed to bail an arrested son out of jail.
Prosecutors, preparing for Newton's sentencing, condemned his "warped conception of his status as an elected official," which they said apparently moved Newton to collect bribes even from the operators of social service agencies providing training and housing for his poor constituents.
"Astonishingly, the defendant's venality knew few bounds, and he readily sold his office and influence for modest sums," the memorandum states. "The defendant's hypocrisy also knew few limits."
When Newton learned that the FBI was closing in, the memo says, he started scheming how to escape arrest. In one of numerous conversations secretly recorded by the FBI, Newton suggested to Warren Godbolt, the operator of a Bridgeport jobs training agency who had paid $5,000 in bribes, that Godbolt should lie if questioned by the FBI. Newton said he would claim Godbolt was paying him for consulting services.
"Because I can be a consultant, Warren, you know, I'm a member of the national black caucus," Newton said on the tape.
Even after pleading guilty in September to three felonies - taking a bribe, failure to pay income taxes and mail fraud - Newton has continued to suggest that he is innocent and to flatly claim that his legal problems are the result of his race. Days before he pleaded guilty, Newton compared himself to Moses. After pleading guilty, he asserted that charges against him would have been resolved administratively by the State Elections Enforcement Commission were he not black.
"If any other legislator, other than being black, it would have went to the elections and campaign [commission]," Newton said in September, outside the federal courthouse in his hometown of Bridgeport. "It should have went before the elections enforcement like any other white lawmaker would have seen."
An asshole to the end. He makes John Rowland look like a saint. I hope he NEVER holds a political office EVER again.
If you would like to read the history of Ernest Newton, just type his name in my search bar on the lower right side of this blog, and you'll get all the details.
UPDATE: I've received a great amount of email regarding Newton scandal and let me just say that the Newton (or Rowland) situations have nothing to do with their political party (unless other members in a particular party were getting kickbacks), this is about dirty political people who do dirty things that effect everyone.
These people don't care about you or me, they care only about filling their pockets (and in Rowland's case, his friends pockets) with your taxpayer dollars. It's not fair to the hard working voters in Connecticut who pay some of the highest taxes in the nation (sales tax, state income tax, gas tax, property taxes, etc).
Whether it's a Republican, Democrat, or an Independent, all crooked politicians should be exposed, booted right out of office, and placed in jail as they betray their oath of office and steal from all of us.
Now Republicans being crooks on a national level…well that’s another matter.
