Well this is an interesting story:
California state Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) — one of the state’s strongest advocates for gun control — was arrested Wednesday on charges that include scheming to defraud citizens of honest services and conspiracy to illegally traffic firearms.
[…]
Yee was reportedly at least $70,000 in debt following his defeat in the mayor’s race, and needed to settle his accounts to run for California secretary of state in 2014. To do so, Yee agreed to perform “certain official acts” for an undercover FBI agent in exchange for donations, according to the affidavit.
During one exchange, Jackson and Yee arranged a meeting between the FBI agent and an illegal arms dealer to organize the sale of a large number of weapons to be imported through the Port of Newark in New Jersey, the affidavit said. Yee discussed details about the weapons during the meeting, according to the document.
I believe Mr. Yee’s mistake in this matter was attempting to enter the arms black market. We know that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is the game in town for illegal arms trafficking. It wouldn’t surprise me if Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) was simply doing a favor for the FBI by going after Yee.
This story is reminiscent of those stories of neoconservatives men who fought tooth and nail against legalized same-sex marriages getting caught having sex with another man. Based on his voting record it appears that Yee thinks nongovernmental individuals are incapable of owning firearms so he decided to traffic arms to, what he believed to be, nongovernmental individuals.
As Yee is a member of the oligarchy I doubt much will happen to him. He’ll probably avoid cage time and may even be able to run for office again. But this case will still be fun to watch for the irony aspect alone.
I read through the indictment last night and basically between the overt corruption and bribery and the outright illegal this particular senator is involved with you would be forced to tone things down for a book or movie about it just to make things believable. That being said affidavits written like this one should probably be seized upon as rough drafts for later crime and political thrillers.
And as far as the comparison to an anti gay marriage senator being caught with a man I think it is more akin to one of the Anti-sodomy types getting caught as the center of an all male gang bang.
I’ve read through part of the indictment and this guy already sounds like a wonderful piece of work. He must have pissed off some people really high up in the chain of command to receive this kind of attention from the federal law enforces.
That is a much better analogy.