Crapo did not change D.C.; it changed him
By: Marty Trillhaase, The Lewiston Tribune, May 13, 2018
The Mike Crapo who went to Washington, D.C., 25 years ago would wince at the headlines that appeared in Idaho newspapers last week.
It turns out the three-term congressman and senator now serving his fourth term had a sweetheart deal at the same condo and with the same landlord as scandal-plagued Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt.
Pruitt’s in hot water because he paid his landlord, health care lobbyist Vicki Hart and husband, lobbyist J. Steven Hart, $50 a night – when he was in Washington, D.C., – to stay at her townhouse.
Try finding an apartment at those prices.
In the midst of reporting about the Pruitt story, the Daily Beast unearthed a reference to Crapo using the Hart condo. When a watchdog group, the Campaign for Accountability, pored over Crapo’s campaign finance reports, it could find no record of the senator reimbursing Hart for the use of her pad – or Hart donating the use of her home as an in-kind contribution to the Crapo campaign.
So it filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission.