The Muckraker's Reference Section
Jeffrey S. Shockey
Federal prosecutors are currently investigating the ties between Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and lobbyist Bill Lowery. Jeffrey S. Shockey has worked for both Lewis and Lowery (first for Lewis, then for Lowery, then back to Lewis again), and has been pegged as exemplifying the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street.
Key Points:
Seven Shockey clients have been served subpoenas in the Lewis/Lowery investigation.
Seven government entities, all of them represented by Shockey, have been served subpoenas for records pertaining to the federal criminal investigation of ties between Lewis and Lowery. Those entities include the Cites of Redlands, Loma Linda, and Twentynine Palms, The Counties of Riverside and San Bernardino, the Cal State San Bernardino Foundation, and the Town of Yucca Valley.
Shockey returned to work for Lewis after a six-year stint at Lowery’s lobbying firm.
Shockey is currently the deputy staff director for the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which this year was responsible for allocating more than $800 billion in discretionary spending. This is his second stint working for Rep. Lewis (R-CA), Chair of the committee: he left in 1999 to work with a lobbying firm co-owned by Lowery (Lewis’s good friend), before returning to work for Lewis when he became Chair at the beginning of last year.
Shockey received a $2 million “parting payment” upon his departure from Copeland, Lowery, Jacques, Denton & White.
The most recently filed financial disclosure forms reveal that Shockey received $2 million last year from his former company as part of a "buy-out" arrangement.
According to the terms of the arrangement, Shockey's payment depended on the money brought into the firm by Copeland, Lowery clients in 2005, the year after he'd left the firm. And firm revenue jumped that year, particularly - and suspiciously - the fees from many of his former clients.
Shockey’s wife, Alexandra, lobbies congressional staffers who work for her husband – on behalf of her husband’s former partners.
Alexandra Shockey entire Beltway career has been under the wing of Rep. Lewis. She had left Washington to start a family before her husband’s return to the Hill prompted her to become a lobbyist and take over some of her husband’s former accounts.
Further softening the financial blow Jeffrey Shockey felt returning to a government job (notwithstanding the job’s $160,000 salary, exceptionally high for a Congressional employee), Lowery’s firm hired Alexandra as a subcontractor.
She keeps an office at Lowery's firm and works under the name of Hillscape Associates. Hillscape’s address on federal disclosure forms, too, matches that of the Lowery firm.
The Shockeys’ attorney, William Oldaker, says the couple’s arrangement was disclosed to the House Ethics Committee, and that Jeffrey Shockey recuses himself from any decisions involving his former, or, his wife’s current, clients.
Research by Michael Powell
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