National Journal's Hotline has this piece on illegal political contributions made by Mitchell Wade, founder of defense contrating firm MZM.

Wade has plead guilty to bribery charges in relation to then Republican Congressman, now convicted felon Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Wade made the illegal contributions by having his employees make contributions, then reimbursing them - a practice known as "straw contributions."

Hotline looked into the contributions coming from MZM's PAC and this is what they have found using www.fecinfo.com:

BTW: here's who MZM's PAC contributed money to in recent cycles.

In '04
Cunningham, Randy "Duke" (R-CA) $6,000
Forbes, J Randy (R-VA) $5,000
Goode, Virgil H Jr (R-VA) $10,000
Harris, Katherine (R-FL) $10,000
Hunter, Duncan (R-CA) $1,000
Renzi, Rick (R-AZ) $2,000


In '06:
Goode, Virgil H Jr (R-VA) $5,000
Hunter, Duncan (R-CA) $2,500
Tiahrt, Todd (R-KS) $1,000
Wamp, Zach (R-TN) $2,000

Notice anything consistent about these? They are all Republicans.

And it looks like a certain Katherine Harris received quite a chunk of change from Wade. Interestingly, this is not the first time Katherine Harris has accepted illegal campaign contributions.

It's not the first time the Longboat Key Republican has had to defend herself for accepting illegal contributions from a company. In 1994, while running for the state Senate, Harris collected $30,000 from a Sarasota company called Riscorp, which like MZM was investigated for violating campaign laws.

Katherine Harris, of course, says she had no idea that she had accepted any illegal contributions. The Washington Post, though, reports that documents relating to Wade's indictment tell a different story.

The member identifiable as Harris received $32,000 in illegal donations from Wade and his employees in 2004. Documents filed with Wade's plea say that he took Harris to dinner early last year, where they discussed the possibility of another fundraiser and the possibility of getting funding for a Navy counterintelligence program in the member's district. One source familiar with the inquiry said Harris made such a request for funding, but it was not granted.