Open corruption for all to see...

Charlie Dent got clearance for trip with donor to Nantucket

By Jake Sherman, Anna Palmer and John Bresnahan

The House Ethics Committee approved a waiver last year that allowed Rep. Charlie Dent — now chairman of the secretive panel — to fly to a posh New England vacation town on the dime of a top campaign donor.

David Jaindl, the owner and president of Jaindl Farms, paid for Dent and his wife to fly from Allentown, Pennsylvania, to Nantucket, Massachusetts. The flight cost $5,500, according to the Pennsylvania Republican’s financial disclosure, which was made public this week.

Jaindl has been a longtime donor to Dent, filling the lawmaker’s reelection account with $25,700 in political contributions between 2003 and 2014. The Jaindl family, which has been described by local press as a major political player in the state, has given Dent nearly $134,000 over his congressional career, according to Federal Election Commission records. The family also held a fundraiser for Dent’s congressional reelection campaign last year.

As a state senator, Dent helped rename a highway for a deceased member of the Jaindl family.

The Ethics Committee issued a waiver for the trip because of a “personal friendship” between Dent and Jaindl, the lawmaker stated on his financial disclosure form. Dent was a member of the Ethics Committee at the time the waiver was approved, and shortly after the flight was cleared, he became chairman of the panel.

This is the first time in his 10-year congressional career that Dent has ever disclosed a gift on his annual financial disclosure form.

A Dent spokesman, Shawn Millan, said the Pennsylvania Republican and Jaindl have been friends “for more than 20 years and received a personal friendship exemption from the Committee for the flight.” Dent served in the Pennsylvania Legislature from 1991 to 2004, before he was elected to Congress.

“The Congressman and Mrs. Dent traveled with Dave, his wife and two other couples who are close friends of both the Dents and the Jaindls,” Millan said in a statement. “The Congressman appropriately requested a waiver from the Ethics Committee as any other House employee or member would and received approval by the Committee to accept the gift.”’

The House gift ban prohibits lawmakers from accepting gifts of more than $350 in total during one year without written permission from the Ethics Committee. The panel does grant waivers based on personal friendships, although a lawmaker or aide applying for an exemption “should identify the donor and briefly describe the donor’s line of work and any interests before Congress, the history of the relationship, and the nature of the gift,” according to the Ethics Committee’s guidance.

Millan said that Dent had “nothing to do with the review or approval of the waiver request and received the same consideration as every other similar request.”

David Jaindl did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The Jaindl family owns a large turkey farm in the Lehigh Valley region that Dent represents. The farm sells 750,000 turkeys annually, according to the company’s website. The family is also involved in real estate development, an orchard and founded American Bank in Allentown.

In May 2014, Mark and Beth Jaindl held a “Run for the Roses” fundraiser at an upscale Allentown restaurant called Vault 634, at which donors pledged from $500 to $2,600 to Dent’s reelection campaign.

When Dent was a state senator, he pushed legislation that named a Pennsylvania highway after a deceased member of the Jaindl family. The bill designated that a portion of the Route 222 bypass in Lehigh County would be named the Fred Jaindl Memorial Highway after the family patriarch, who died in a car crash in March 2004.