Top Fred Thompson Donor Is a Drug Dealer

This post, written by Howie Klein, originally appeared on Down With Tyranny!

So Rudy Giuliani isn't the only Republican presidential hopeful who chose a big-time drug dealer for his campaign. According to tomorrow's Washington Post, Frederick of Hollywood "has been crisscrossing the country since early this summer on a private jet lent to him by a businessman and close adviser who has a criminal record for drug dealing." Philip Martin, the alleged "businessman" was in the same "business" as the head of Giuliani's South Carolina campaign, selling cocaine.

Martin entered a plea of guilty to the sale of 11 pounds of marijuana in 1979; the court withheld judgment pending completion of his probation. He was charged in 1983 with violating his probation and with multiple counts of felony bookmaking, cocaine trafficking and conspiracy. He pleaded no contest to the cocaine-trafficking and conspiracy charges, which stemmed from a plan to sell $30,000 worth of the drug, and was continued on probation.

This story is starting to sound very familiar-- and not just because of the cocaine. When Giuliani was confronted with Bernie Kerik's criminal past-- which court documents show he was clearly made aware of before he appointed Kerik to a string of jobs that proved very lucrative for both of them (and long before he tried getting Bush to appoint Kerik, despite his strong ties to the Mafia, to run the Dept. of Homeland Security-- he denied knowing anything (a blatant lie). Guess what Thompson says? Yep, he's reading right from the Giuliani playbook. Thompson claims he "was not aware of the multiple criminal cases" against the close friend who is known as "the head of 'Thompson's Airforce.'" The campaign says they didn't vet Martin because he was such a close personal friend of Sir Frederick's. Watch, in 2 weeks, they'll be claiming they never really knew each other.

Thompson's frequent flights aboard Martin's twin-engine Cessna 560 Citation have saved him more than $100,000, because until the law changed in September, campaign-finance rules allowed presidential candidates to reimburse private jet owners for just a fraction of the true cost.

I'll bet this doesn't get the kind of prolonged media attention the relatively innocuous Norman Hsu did for his Clinton donations even though "Martin has been more than just a key fundraiser to Thompson." Apparently there were tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of dollars in flights that have not been properly accounted for.

There have been rumors around Hollywood for years that aside from being a notorious woman-chaser, Thompson is also a big-time coke hound. That would certainly explain the closeness with Martin, who has also been in cahoots with a shady right-wing extremist Zach Wamp, now a Tennessee congressman. "Archived Florida court records provide details of the various cases against Martin, including alleged sports-betting activity, a cocaine deal he arranged with an undercover sheriff's deputy and carried out through a middleman, and the sale of 11 pounds of marijuana to an undercover detective for $3,400. Martin produced the marijuana from the trunk of his 1973 Cadillac as the two were parked behind a Tampa-area department store, according to the arrest report.