How Gingrich's Earmark Regine Led To Cunningham Corruption

By George E. Condon Jr. // January 27, 2012 | 4:56 p.m.

** FILE ** Republican U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and his wife Nancy, are shown during a news conference in this July 14, 2005, file photo taken in San Marcos, Calif. Nancy Cunningham felt deceived about the extent of her now-estranged husband's corruption, she said in her first public interview since the scandal broke last year. Cunningham, 54, said in the Aug. 28 issue of The New Republic magazine that it was her husband's greed that led to his downfall. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi, file) (Lenny Ignelzi/AP)

Randy "Duke" Cunningham was always Newt Gingrich's kind of congressman. The California Republican truly was grandiose -- grandiose in his ego, grandiose in his crudeness, grandiose in his bribe-taking, grandiose in his corruption. So it should not surprise the former speaker in the slightest that Cunningham, the most corrupt congressman ever caught, would reach out to Gingrich from inside his berth in a federal prison outside Tucson.

Cunningham is serving the longest sentence ever given any member of Congress, a 100-month term that should keep him incarcerated until June 2013. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion in 2005, resigning his San Diego County seat in Congress Dec. 6, 2005 after 15 years in office.