Maxine Waters and Barney Frank Keeping Good Company

These House Democrats sure do manage to find the sleaziest people to hang around and do favors for, don't they?

Call it business as usual.

The married bank honcho at the center of the Maxine Waters ethics firestorm was arrested for allegedly sodomizing a woman and possessing cocaine at a company-owned manse just months before U.S. Rep. Barney Frank arranged a controversial taxpayer bailout for the Hub-based lender.

The charges against OneUnited Chairman and CEO Kevin L. Cohee, 52, who splits his time between Chestnut Hill and Santa Monica, were dismissed - including allegations of possessing cocaine, illegal narcotics and opiates in his company’s $6.4 million beachfront villa. Cohee agreed to participate in a “drug diversion program” in exchange for the drug charges being dismissed, according to Santa Monica Police Sgt. Jay Trisler.

Accusations of sodomy were dropped shortly after his arrest in April 2007. During that investigation, the police searched his company-owned home and arrested him on the drug charges.

Frank, of course, pretended he knew nothing of the legal trouble facing this good pal of Waters.

In testimony to a House ethics panel, Waters called Cohee a “friend” and said she had been to one of his homes for a Christmas party and a fund-raiser.

Cohee’s legal plight played out until the drug charges against him were dropped in July 2008 - the month before he began working to secure a federal bailout for his bank, raising serious questions about the degree of vetting by federal regulators and members of Congress.

Frank, who chairs the powerful House Financial Services Committee, said through a spokesman that he was unaware of Cohee’s past legal troubles when he helped ensure that OneUnited - the Bay State’s only African-American-owned bank - would be eligible for a federal bailout.

“He didn’t know that,” Frank spokesman Harry Gural told the Herald, referring to Cohee’s arrest and the dropped charges. “He would have looked into it if someone had told him this. If there appeared to be merit to it (the charges), he would have called it to the attention of federal regulators.”

Sure he would have. Sure.Looks like Bawney is also caught in a lie.

Frank has previously denied Waters had any sway over his efforts to help OneUnited, but admitted he was working on behalf of Cohee and disgraced state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson.

Hmmm.