Rangel Creates Legal Defense Fund; Wait, Isn't This a Little Late?

Seems this may have been a good idea back around the summer of 2008, when his legal problems began piling up. Now seriously, who's going to start coughing up money for this hack after he's been reduced to a punchline?

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) has created a legal defense fund to help pay attorneys' fees following a lengthy ethics investigation that ended with his censure on the House floor.

The 20-term lawmaker has been given permission by the House ethics committee to create the Charles B. Rangel Legal Defense Trust, which is soliciting donations of up to $5,000. Rangel press secretary Hannah Kim confirmed the creation of the fund, first reported by the website Politics Daily.

In a statement, Rangel said the fund will help him "retain counsel for on-going activities related to the recently-concluded ethics investigations and other on-going matters" and to combat new charges brought before the Federal Election Commission (FEC) by a conservative nonprofit group.

The FEC earlier this month opened a probe into allegations by the National Legal and Policy Center that the former Ways and Means Committee chairman improperly used funds from his National Leadership PAC to pay for his legal counsel in his ethics case.

"The repeated filings of allegations, no matter how unsubstantiated, by the National Legal Policy Committee, a politically-motivated right wing group dedicated to eviscerating civil rights and labor union protections, have led me to this action," Rangel said in the statement.

Oooh, it's those evil rightwing bogeymen again. How pathetic. And didn't he get rid of his attorneys back in the fall? So who's he paying now with money gained from this latest scam of his? Himself?