Icebreaker owner gave Don Young an envelope with $60,000 in checks in 2011
ProPublica has a good update on the long campaign by a Louisiana company to sell its icebreaker to the U.S. government, an effort that the late Rep. Don Young promoted for many years in Congress without success.
Edison Chouest sold the Aiviq to the government on November 20 for $125 million, as efforts to build new icebreakers for the Coast Guard remain behind schedule.
The Alaska Congressional delegation put the money in the federal budget.
“The way Congress wrote the specifications for a ‘United States built’ icebreaker, however, ensured there was only one the Coast Guard could choose: the Aiviq,” ProPublica reported.
Here is the story by McKenzie Funk.
One big thing to know about this is that the Chouest family in Louisiana helped bankroll the political campaigns of the late Rep. Don Young for years. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has received $84,400, while Sen. Dan Sullivan has received at least $31,500.
Whenever I read about the icebreaker, I think about a Texas event in 2011 in which Gary Chouest, head of the family, handed Young an envelope stuffed with 12 checks from 12 branches of his business empire, each check a $5,000 donation to the Congressman Don Young Legal Expense Trust. There was a $5,000 contribution limit per individual.
Young said he never opened the envelope, but gave it to the head of his trust, Bering Strait Native Corporation executive Gail Schubert.
Young told investigators he assumed the envelope contained donations to his legal defense fund. The Texas event was set up to raise money for Young’s defense.
Young set up the legal defense fund at the end of 2007 during the Veco scandal to accept money for his legal defense.
Young said he did not ask for donations to his defense fund. “Instead, people will come to the witness and ask him, ‘How is your defense fund?’” Young said in an interview with the Office of Congressional Ethics.
When I wrote the following column on October 12, 2018, Young had collected $220,620 from the Chouest family and close associates. By the time of Young’s death three years ago at 88, Edison Chouest had surpassed Bill Allen and Veco as the all-time leader in campaign donations to Young, giving him nearly $300,000.
Some of the most consistent financial benefactors of Rep. Don Young have never had the chance to cast a ballot for him.
They can’t. They don’t live in Alaska. But they vote with their money.
The Chouest family in Louisiana has been a top contributor to Young for more than a decade, now close to surpassing the $231,620 Young collected from Bill Allen and others associated with Veco until it collapsed during the Alaska political corruption scandal.
The family controls numerous entities that deal with shipping and marine cargo. Its members have given Young $220,300 over the years, according to OpenSecrets.org, an organization that helps anyone follow the money in U.S politics.
Edison Chouest, a firm named for the family patriarch who died in 2008, now has a contract with Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. for oil tanker escorts in Valdez. It operates more than 200 vessels worldwide, one of which is an icebreaker built for Arctic service that it has tried to get the U.S. Coast Guard to lease.
Individuals associated with Edison Chouest have given $32,400 during the 2018 election season to Young, the most of any entity, according to OpenSecrets.org.
He has received $5,400 each for this campaign from Ross Chouest, Casey Chouest, Dionne Austin Chouest, Gary Chouest, Carolyn Chouest, and $2,700 each from Dino Chouest and Damon Chouest.
Gary, Ross, Carolyn, Dino, Dionne, Damon and Casey have also given generously to Young in past campaigns. In addition, the family largely bankrolled the Don Young Legal Expense Trust to help him pay for lawyers when he was in trouble.
In late 2010 or early 2011, Gary Chouest, head of the family business, talked to Young on the phone, offering to raise funds for Young’s legal bills from his various family-owned companies, according to a House ethics investigation.
In January 2011, at a fundraiser in Texas, Gary handed an envelope to Young that contained a dozen $5,000 checks. The checks were from 12 family companies, all of them at 16201 East Main St. in Galliano, LA.
In the ethics investigation that followed, the key issue was whether separate checks totaling $60,000 were a way to surpass the $5,000 per company annual limit on such donations.
Young later told the Office of Congressional Ethics that he did not open the envelope and he did not know how much was in it. He said he sent it directly to the person handling his trust. Young’s chief of staff at the time said he gave her the envelope and she forwarded it to the trustee.
“Representative Young has known the Chouest family of Louisiana for approximately ten years, and he considers members of the family, including Gary Chouest, to be good friends,” the committee said in its report.
“Over the course of their relationship, Representative Young and Gary Chouest have attended a number of social events together, including dinners and fishing events.”
At some point, Young became aware that the envelope Gary Chouest gave him contained $60,000, according to the ethics committee report. Young said he called Gary Chouest to thank him.
The ethics committee concluded that since the Chouest companies were separate legal entities, the $60,000 did not violate the $5,000 per person limit, even though the same people owned all 12 companies.
Dionne Chouest Austin, registered agent for the 12 companies, signed all of the checks on January 6 or January 7, 2011.
The ethics committee said the identical ownership of the 12 companies “challenges the principles of the contribution limits” , however, so it tightened the rules as of January 1, 2012 to apply a $5,000 cap.
Jump ahead four-and-a-half years to July 12, 2016, when Young lobbied in a transportation subcommittee meeting to get the U.S. Coast Guard to lease an Edison Chouest ship to use in the Arctic.
“I’ll get the elephant out in the room, in a sense,” Young said during a hearing covered by Liz Ruskin, the Washington, D.C. reporter for Alaska Public Media.
No one mentioned the name of the ship or the name of the company, but there was no doubt about the identity of the elephant.
It was the $200-million Aiviq, a ship built by Edison Chouest that Shell was going to use in icy waters. In 2011, Gary Chouest told the Houston Chronicle it would be the “world’s largest and most powerful anchor-handling ice breaker.”
Its main job for Shell was to move anchors for drilling rigs. But the 360-foot Aiviq lost all four of its engines while towing the Kulluk in late 2012 near Kodiak when seawater got into the fuel supply. The Kulluk ended up on the rocks.
Shell later gave up on its Arctic leases entirely after hitting a dry hole and the icebreaker was left without a mission. It wasn’t long before the company was lobbying the Coast Guard for a contract.
Young said it was a ship with “tremendous capability of icebreaking power” and it was “American-built, American-manned, American-maintained.” It would be retrofitted in 12 or 18 months, he said.
“Would you be interested in that, admiral, if that was to take place?” Young said to Adm. Charles Michel. “I know you’ve got the proposal on your desk, by the way. It’s already been laid on your desk and it’s an automatic no. Why?”
The commandant of the Coast Guard had inspected the ship and found it was not suitable for military service without a big overhaul and that it would be expected to do more than break the ice.
“Sir, our current opinion is that ship is not suitable for military service without substantial refit,” said Michel.
“See, and that is what I call, Mr. Chairman, a bullshit answer. Military service. I’m talking about moving ice,” Young said.
Young was interrupted by Chairman Duncan Hunter of California, another prime recipient of contributions from Edison Chouest.
For several minutes Hunter continued to press Michel on why the Coast Guard could not accept a “non-military vessel.”
Hunter, who was indicted in 2018 for improperly using campaign funds, continued to press the Coast Guard to lease or buy the Aiviq. In 2017, he proposed that the government spend $5 million to pay for sea trials on a leased vessel.
In August 2018 the San Diego Union Tribune said Edison Chouest had donated $25,000 to Hunter’s new legal defense fund.
Meanwhile, a Canadian company has been trying to get the Canadian Coast Guard to convert the Aiviq for use in its fleet.
(Update: In 2019, Hunter pleaded guilty to stealing $150,000 in campaign funds and was sentenced to 11 months in jail. “He spent campaign money on a plethora of personal endeavors, including extramarital affairs, tobacco and a late-night bachelor party in Washington,” Roll Call reported. In 2020, two weeks before Hunter was supposed to go to jail, Trump pardoned Hunter and Hunter’s wife.)
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