The Post-Dispatch goes front-page above-the-fold with a story by Jo Mannies on Governor Matt Blunt's fee office scheme. [1] Jo gets an awful lot of information on the record in this story.

Here's the most telling part. Blunt is already starting to talk like a guy who knows he is going to end up appearing before a grand jury:

Jackson said the governor was not involved in the creation of the management companies and doesn't recall being aware of them. {emphasis added}

That sure seems like a very careful construction. But then again, I guess it depends on what your definition of "aware" is.

The PD even produced a snazzy little graphic [2] to demonstrate the Blunt-Lott web.

The major unasked and unanswered question in this story is who ultimately benefits from these management companies. There is no reason for the Governor to cloak these transactions in such secrecy unless there is someone benefitting from the deal that he doesn't want the public to know about.

As Jac Cardetti says in the story, the Governor should require his fee agents to make the financial ties to the management companies publicly available.

"The management companies are set up to hide who ultimately benefits from Gov. Blunt's fee office system," said Jack Cardetti, spokesman for the Missouri Democratic Party. "That is what's so troubling. If Blunt wanted to lift the curtain and let the sunshine in, he could require his fee agents to disclose their contracts with these management companies."

It's also quite interesting that the Governor claims that he had no knowledge about the management companies, yet his appointments director, James Harris, has previously acknowledged that he knew about them. They clearly don't yet have their story together on that piece of the scandal.

Random Fee Office/Garrett Lott Trivia

• Garrett Lott remains an officer in Missourians for Matt Blunt, Inc. and was Treasurer of Talent for Senate until just before the federal investigation began.
• Jason Otke, one of the fee agents mentioned in the PD story/graphic, is the brother-in-law of uber-lobbyist and Andy Blunt business associate, Jewell Patek.
• Tyler Alcorn (who was originally named for the West County fee office before it was changed over into the name of his wife) is a business partner with Lott in a company called Communication Strategies, Inc. [3] Jo mentions this in her story, but doesn't give the name of the company.
• Garrett Lott was also the treasurer of the mysterious Missouri Millenium Fund, which funnelled money to Missouri Republicans from clients of Jack Abramoff.
• Several of the fee agents in the PD graphic also have ties to Rep. Nathan Cooper and his 158th Legislative Disctrict Committee, which has paid consulting fees to James Harris, the Governor Appointments Director.
• Those agents include Buddy Hardin, Abid Nisar and Damir Husic, among others that were not mentioned by the Post-Dispatch.
• The Creve Coeur office is in the name of James Day, who on the corporate records lists the same address in Wildwood as Karen Mohan Day, Governor Blunt's chief fundraising staffer. Though on Governor Blunt's campaign finance reports, Mr. Day lists an address in Marshfield, which would be quite a commute to Creve Coeur every day. [4]
• The Kansas City equivalent to Lott and Cohen's operation is run by Stephanie Goodnight. Her company is called, cleverly enough, KC Management. Goodnight is the cousin of former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves' wife, Tracy.

More as I think of it.