Tom Lindenfeld, member of Fattah's inner circle, pleads guilty
One day after breezing to reelection, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah faced deepening legal problems with the guilty plea of a second member of his inner circle.
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One day after breezing to reelection, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah faced deepening legal problems with the guilty plea of a second member of his inner circle.
Political consultant Thomas Lindenfeld, 59, of Washington D.C., pleaded guilty Wednesday to a single count of wire fraud. Lindenfeld faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and up to five years of supervised release.
Prosecutors contend he conspired with Fattah, identified in court Wednesday only as "Elected Official A," to secure a federal earmark to fund an environmental nonprofit organization, when the real goal was to use that money to pay Lindenfeld for campaign work in the congressman's failed 2007 failed mayoral bid.
The charges were announced today by United States Attorney Zane David Memeger, Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Department of Justice's Criminal Division, FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Edward J. Hanko, and IRS Criminal Investigation Acting Special Agent-in-Charge Richard Gross.
Lindenfeld's plea is a blow to Fattah. The Philadelphia Democrat could not be reached for comment Wednesday. His attorney, Luther E. Weaver, declined comment.
Lindenfeld, an intense and brainy high school dropout who built a political consulting business with clients who included a long-shot U.S. Senate candidate named Barack Obama, was a central figure in the campaign scandal that netted former Fattah staffer Greg Naylor in August.
In Fattah's unsuccessful 2007 mayoral primary, Lindenfeld tapped a wealthy former chief executive of the massive Sallie Mae lending agency.
Alfred Lord, 68, loaned $1 million to help Fattah, buying media ads, which Lindenfeld handled.
Neither he nor Naylor have responded to calls seeking comment since the arrangement was detailed in court documents in August.
The two men worked together on primary day, May 15, 2007, running the effort to get voters to the polls. According to prosecutors, Naylor distributed $200,000 from the loan in street money, paying committeepeople for their election-day labor in a time-honored Philadelphia tradition.
The $1 million loan was not reported on any of Fattah's campaign-finance forms, prosecutors said.
Lindenfeld, who at one time was a partner of famed political adviser David Axelrod, grossed more than $5 million working on campaigns for Democrats in at least 16 states in the last decade, according to election records.
Though he grew up in New Jersey, Lindenfeld might have leaped from the pages of Edwin O'Connor's The Last Hurrah, the classic novel of Boston politics. Despite dropping out of high school, he ultimately graduated from Princeton University.
Rumpled, built like a longshoreman, and given to cursing like one, he is considered a master at devising election-day field organizations to find caches of new voters for his candidates and bring them to the polls.
He helped get John F. Street elected mayor of Philadelphia and helped propel Obama into the U.S. Senate and, later, the presidency.
"Tom is the consummate operator - very gregarious and aggressive," said a Philadelphia Democratic strategist. "He wants to make deals, be known as the guy who gets stuff done when no one else can."
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