Colorado: Tom Tancredo

(Photo/Rep. Ed Perlmutter)

Colorado Rep. Ed Perlmutter denied any wrongdoing in securing an earmark for defense consultancy IHS, Inc., a client of disintegrating lobby firm PMA, which is under investigation by the FBI.

(Photo/Rep. Ed Perlmutter)

Perlmutter spokesperson Leslie Oliver asked The Colorado Independent to run a correction as she described the line Perlmutter draws when it comes to the business that mixes earmarks and campaign donations. “We took no campaign money from IHS,” Oliver said. “But yes, we received campaign contributions from PMA’s political action committee.”

IHS won an extra million dollars thanks to Perlmutter and the other members of the Colorado delegation who voted for the IHS earmark, including Wayne Allard, Ken Salazar and Tom Tancredo.

Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn. (Photo/lamborn.house.gov)

U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) has issued a statement insisting campaign contributions have nothing to do with appropriations requests, despite mounting evidence that the lobbying firm PMA secured lucrative government contracts for its clients by orchestrating a series of campaign donations to lawmakers, including Lamborn.

Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn. (Photo/lamborn.house.gov)

As the Colorado Independent reported Monday, Lamborn is not the only member of the Colorado delegation to be touched by the scandal. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, Sen. Mark Udall and retired Rep. Tom Tancredo also worked to win contract money for PMA clients and also received campaign contributions either from the companies that benefited or from PMA.

The Republican is accused of improperly allowing an employee who dealt with elections to also operate a partisan political business. Coffman will go before the new state Independent Ethics Commission next month.

A 2007 state audit concluded that Coffman failed to properly supervise his employees. Afterward Coffman set up a new policy preventing election workers on his staff from partisan activity.

The ethics complaint also accused Coffman of improperly approving electronic voting machines made by a company that hired a lobbying group he used to run his successful congressional campaign.

The complaint was filed last year by Colorado Ethics Watch, a government watchdog group.

It seems former Congressman Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., has learned at least one thing from the experiences of his former colleague, Bob Schaffer: Shred your paper trail before it comes back to shred you.

According to a report at Politico.com, Tancredo destroyed much if not all of his congressional papers: “‘I think we shredded everything that was shreddable,’ Tancredo said. Asked if he had considered keeping any materials, the Colorado Republican seemed surprised. ‘No, absolutely not,’ he said. ‘Who the hell would want it?’”

Allow us to answer that last question: Journalists.

Given Tancredo possibly jumping into a top-of-the-ticket race in 2010, journalists would love to comb through his papers wherever they could have ended up.