Bob Filner: “I have introduced this evening legislation that calls for a special prosecutor to be named to look into the whole Enron…”

“I have introduced this evening legislation that calls for a special prosecutor to be named to look into the whole Enron mess. Sure, this is a business scandal, and congressional committees are looking into reforms of our auditing practices of public corporations and the safety of employee pension plans. But this is a scandal that goes far beyond that. This is a scandal that shows the pervasive corruption in American politics. My legislation asks for a special prosecutor to look into the relationship between Enron and the manipulation of the stock market and its value per share; to look into the relationship between contributions by Enron to the President, the Vice President, Cabinet officers, other administration officials, and congresspeople. I am asking the prosecutor to look into the influence of Enron on Federal and State legislation, including, in particular, the effort to deregulate energy markets, both in States and in the Nation as a whole. Finally, I ask for the prosecutor to look into the relationship between Enron and our whole Federal and State regulatory system. When we went through the energy crisis in California in the summer of 2000 and since, many of us claimed that this was not a supply and demand crisis but a crisis of manipulation of our market; and, in fact, that criminal manipulation resulted in the theft of anywhere between $20 billion and $40 billion from California ratepayers.”