(WP front page, by John Solomon:) Identity of Edwards Home's Buyers Veiled

[Newsjock]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/AR2007011802077.html

When former North Carolina senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards finally succeeded last month in selling his imposing Georgetown mansion for $5.2 million after it had languished on the market, the names of the buyers were not publicly disclosed.

At the time, Edwards's spokeswoman told reporters that the house had been sold to an unidentified corporation. In reality, the buyers were Paul and Terry Klaassen, according to several sources and confirmed by Edwards's spokeswoman yesterday.

The wealthy founders of the nation's largest assisted-living housing chain for seniors, the Klaassens are currently cooperating with a government inquiry in connection with accounting practices and stock options exercised by them and other company insiders. They are also the focus of legal complaints by some of the same labor unions whose support Edwards has been assiduously courting for his presidential bid.

By way of background on John Solomon, who recently moved from the AP to the Post:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200606020002
Associated Press staff writer John Solomon's seriously flawed articles suggesting that Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid had acted improperly by attending Las Vegas boxing matches as the guest of the Nevada Athletic Commission "while that state agency was trying to influence him on federal regulation of boxing" are the latest in a series of misleading reports by Solomon alleging unethical behavior by Reid, as well as by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND).

[Straight Shooter]

1. Shades of the Whitewater Witch Hunt.

WaPo is becoming a gutter rag.

[Cocoa]

2. a surprise Christmas gift for his wife

kind of raises the bar for all the husbands out there...

Gossett declined to reveal the Klaassens' identity but said the buyer decided to purchase the mansion as a "surprise Christmas gift" for his wife.

[Leilani]

3. Senator Obama's real estate transactions

have been written about repeatedly, & he answered questions posed by the press.

Is Edwards above the same scruitiny?

[oddmanout]

4. Uhhh?

What difference does it make who he sells his house to? Is this really something that people should worry about?.....Just asking.


:shrug:

[Igel]

7. Because there have been a few cases where

bribes and corruption have come masked as house purchases.

You can pay a corrupt politician $500k, or you can buy a house they have for sale at $500k more than it would normally fetch. If the house has sat around on the market for a long time, or just went on the market, and the buyer has some interest that can be served by the seller, it's worth checking.

[dsc]

5. I love how the writer buries in paragraph 4

that Edwards got less then he was asking for the house. After substantial renovations in what was one of the hottest markets in the country he made a 1.4 millon dollar profit on a 3.8 million dollar house. Funny how Mr. Solomon didn't write squat about Hassert making 2 million on some land (which he had done nothing to) after he engineered a prarie highway to cut right through it.

[Demit]

6. I guess the "Was Hillary actually on the phone?" controversy was already

being covered. John Solomon is a joke.