Ranking Democrat on the House Ethnics committee, Allan Mollohan (D-WV), saw his net worth increase by 1115% between 2000 and 2004, from $565,000 to $6.3 million.

Actually that's conservative--his net worth may have increased to nearly 25 million.

A closer examination revealed that Mollohan and his wife had more than $2,000,000 in real estate investments with a former staffer, Laura Kuhns, and her husband. Kuhns ran a nonprofit, Vandalia Heritage Foundation, which had received more than $28 million in appropriations earmarks with Mollohan’s help from 2000 through 2005. She was also on the board of other nonprofit groups which had received over $100 million in earmarks of federal funds during the same period with Mollohan’s help.

Mollohan’s 2000 Financial Disclosure Report listed his income-producing assets as being worth from $179,012 to $562,000 with liabilities of $170,000 to $465,000. Among the liabilities was Visa credit card debt listed as $45,003 to $150,000.

Just four years later, Mollohan’s 2004 Financial Disclosure Report showed him with assets worth $6,313,025 to $24,947,000 offset by liabilities in the $3,665,011 to $13,500,000 range. It also showed him owning an oceanfront beach house on Bald Head Island, NC which was valued at $1,000,000 to $5,000,000. NLPC found that Mollohan was renting the beach house during the summer of 2005 for $11,975 a week.

In a Wallstreet Journal story (subscriber only), Mollohan of course defends his investments as "above board" and all of his earmarks as of the highest quality.

The irony here, is that Bob Ney, Republican chairman of the committee, was asked to step down for the mere appearance of impropriety involving disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff (accepting dinners, golf and campaign contributions from Abramoff), yet Nancy Pelosi says "no problem".

"I have the highest regard for Mr. Mollohan. I named him to that position [on the ethics cmte] because of his independence and the high respect he commands in this Congress."

Pelosi has come back with a litany of alleged "Republican ethics" problems, but hoping that the mainstream media will only look at Republican ethics problems seems a slender reed to lean on, particularly when guys like Mollohan are raking in millions for their personal use and diverting further millions in earmarks to their buddies.

From Human Events:

Currently, the three congressmen who appear most likely to be indicted are Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), William Jefferson (D-La.), and Bob Ney (R-Ohio). Add Mollohan to that list, and it could become difficult for Democrats to campaign on the "Republican Culture of Corruption" that has laced their rhetoric for months now.