Biography
Hamilton,a native Virginian,served as a senior member of the Virginia House of Delegates. He represented the 93rd District,which comprises portions of the City of Newport News and James City County. Divorced with two grown children,Hamilton has lived in the 93rd district since its creation as a single member district in the early 1980s.
Hamilton graduated from Warwick High School in 1970 and the University of Richmond in 1974. After college,Hamilton began teaching for the Newport News Public Schools. While teaching full-time,he earned graduate degrees in Educational Administration from the College of William &Mary. In 1984,Hamilton became an Assistant Principal with the Newport News Public Schools. He is employed part-time by Newport News Public Schools as Coordinator of Professional Development.
In the General Assembly,Hamilton served as Chairman of the Health,Welfare,and Institutions Committee and was the second-ranking member on the Education Committee. As Vice-Chairman of the Appropriations Committee,Hamilton had a significant role in the budget process. In addition to having served as Chairman of the Health and Human Resources Subcommittee,Hamilton served on the Public Education and Public Safety Subcommittees and was one of the few legislators who served on the Budget Conference Committee,whose members negotiate the final version of Virginia's budget.
Prior to his bribery conviction,Virginia organizations named Hamilton as "Legislator of the Year" 12 times. [3]
ODU funding scandal,federal convictions and prison sentence
In August 2009 Virginia newspapers obtained emails which revealed Hamilton expected to be hired by Old Dominion University (ODU) in return for procuring public funding for a new teacher training center. The General Assembly went on to give the center $500,000 a year in state funding,and ODU,in turn,gave Hamilton a $40,000 a year job as an independent contractor. Once the emails were made public Hamilton and ODU immediately severed ties. [4]
On September 17,ODU released an internal audit on the Hamilton hiring. The audit found that Hamilton's invoices had "no details of services rendered" and that his office was "only lightly used in the beginning and then later not at all." Regarding ODU,the audit concluded the school suffered from a lack of internal control and failed to follow its own policies and procedures. [5]
Hamilton was sentenced on August 12,2011 to 9 1/2 years in prison by a U.S. district jury after a conviction in May of one count of federal program bribery and one count of extortion under color of official right for what was found to be criminal solicitation of Old Dominion University employees for the ODU contractor position,a coerced quid pro quo for a legislative budget amendment to fund the position and the training center that Hamilton had introduced in the Virginia legislature. The Court ordered him to surrender to authorities by September 19,2011 and to serve two additional years of supervised release following his 114-month prison term. [2]
Prosecutors said Hamilton is the first elected Virginia legislator to be convicted of selling his position for personal gain. In August 2016,he and former Democratic Congressmen Chaka Fattah of Philadelphia,Pennsylvania became two of the first people convicted of public corruption to try to take advantage of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the case involving former Republican Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. Hamilton,representing himself,petitioned the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for relief. [6]
In May 2013,a man was charged with attempting to defraud Hamilton's former wife Roxanne Burnette of more than $20,000 by claiming that he was working on obtaining a presidential pardon for Hamilton. [7]
Michael Joseph "Ozzie" Myers is an American politician and convicted felon who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1976 to 1980. A member of the Democratic Party, Myers became involved in the Abscam scandal during his tenure in Congress and was expelled from the House after being caught taking bribes in a sting operation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He spent three years in federal prison. In 2020, he was accused of stuffing ballot boxes in Philadelphia elections during the 2010s, and charged with election fraud. He pleaded guilty in 2022 and was sentenced to 2.5 years in federal prison.
John Newton Ford, is a former Democratic member of the Tennessee State Senate and a member of Tennessee's most prominent African-American political family. He is the older brother of former U.S. Representative Harold Ford, Sr. and the uncle of former Tennessee U.S. Representative and 2006 United States Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr.
Operation Boptrot, also referred to as Boptrot, was an investigation by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into corruption among the Kentucky General Assembly, the Commonwealth's legislature. The operation was highly successful, with the investigation culminating in several indictments in 1992, leading to the conviction of more than a dozen legislators between 1992 and 1995. The investigation also led to reform legislation being passed in 1993.
William Frank Boyland Jr. is an American convicted felon and former politician from the state of New York. A Democrat, Boyland represented District 55 (Brooklyn) in the New York State Assembly and was first elected in a 2003 special election. He forfeited his Assembly seat on March 6, 2014 due to his conviction on federal felony charges related to extortion, bribery, and official corruption, and he was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
The Alaska political corruption probe refers to a 2003 to 2010 widespread investigation by the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Internal Revenue Service into political corruption of nine then-current or former Alaskan state lawmakers, as well as Republican US Representative Don Young and then-US Senator, Republican Ted Stevens. Sometimes referred to as "The Corrupt Bastards Club" or the "Operation Polar Pen", the investigation focused on the oil industry, fisheries and for-profit prison industries.
Peter Kott is a former Republican state representative for District 17 serving Eagle River, Alaska, in the Alaska Legislature for seven terms, from 1993 until 2007. He was Speaker of the House during his sixth term in 2003–2004.
Thomas T. Anderson was a partner at Optima Public Relations in Anchorage, Alaska and host of the "Tom Anderson Show" radio talk show (www.TomAndersonShow.com) on KVNT 92.5 FM and 1020 AM in Anchorage and Mat-Su. Anderson, a Republican, was an Alaska state representative for District 19 representing northeast Anchorage for two terms, from 2003 to 2007. He became known for his sponsorship of legislation which expanded Alaska's DNA database to assist in forensic identification of criminal suspects through DNA testing.
Sue Kullen is an American politician from Maryland and a member of the Democratic Party. She served two terms in the Maryland House of Delegates, representing Maryland's District 27B in Calvert County. Kullen was originally appointed to the seat in 2004, and elected in 2006. She served on the Health and Government Operations Committee from 2004 to 2011 and as President of the Women Legislators of Maryland, a nonpartisan committee of state legislators, from 2009 to 2011. In 2014, Kullen ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Maryland House of Delegates in District 27C, losing to incumbent Mark Fisher.
Richard Lawrence Saslaw is an American politician who served as Majority Leader of the Senate of Virginia between 2020 – 2024, when he declined to run for reelection. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1976–80, then was elected to the Senate of Virginia. He represented the 35th district, made up of the city of Falls Church and portions of Fairfax County and the city of Alexandria.
Rufus Seth Williams is a former district attorney of the city of Philadelphia. He began his term January 4, 2010. He formerly served as an assistant district attorney. Williams was the first African-American district attorney in Philadelphia and in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. On March 21, 2017, Williams was indicted on 23 counts of bribery, extortion, and fraud. His trial began June 19, 2017. He resigned and pleaded guilty to one charge on June 29, 2017.
Alexander Paul George Sittenfeld is an American politician and former member of the Cincinnati City Council. He has been convicted of felony bribery and attempted extortion. A convicted felon, Sittenfeld was an inmate at FCI Ashland, but was released from prison pending the outcome of his appeal.
The Priority Development Assistance Fund scam, also called the PDAF scam or the pork barrel scam, is a political scandal involving the alleged misuse by several members of the Congress of the Philippines of their Priority Development Assistance Fund, a lump-sum discretionary fund granted to each member of Congress for spending on priority development projects of the Philippine government, mostly on the national level.
Corruption in Illinois has been a problem from the earliest history of the state. Electoral fraud in Illinois pre-dates the territory's admission to the Union in 1818. Illinois had the third most federal criminal convictions for public corruption between 1976 and 2012, behind New York and California. A study published by the University of Illinois Chicago in 2022 ranked Illinois as the second most corrupt state in the nation, with 4 out of the last 11 governors serving time in prison.
McDonnell v. United States, 579 U.S. 550 (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning the appeal of former Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell's conviction for honest services fraud and Hobbs Act extortion. At issue on appeal was whether the definition of "official act" within the federal bribery statutes encompassed the actions for which McDonnell had been convicted and whether the jury had been properly instructed on this definition at trial.
The impeachment of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia occurred on August 13, 2018, when the West Virginia House of Delegates voted to impeach all five justices of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia for charges relating to corruption, overspending, and lack of oversight. Despite being threatened in other states at other times, this is the only time in United States history that the entire bench of the highest court of a state has been impeached.
