Mannies: Cummins probe did not look into Western District fee offices

Another wrinkle has been thrown into the continuing Missouri license fee saga.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch political reporter Jo Mannies' interview with former U. S. Attorney Bud Cummins of Arkansas makes it clear that no fee offices in the western part of the state, including those awarded to relatives and associates of Sixth District Congressman Sam Graves and his brother, former Western District U. S. Attorney Todd Graves, were ever investigated:

"The scope of our investigation was limited to the fee offices in the Eastern District," Cummins said. "It could have spread, but it didn't."

As a result, when it came to the fee office operation in Missouri’s Western District, "at no time did any of the fee offices in that part of the state come into the picture."

Cummins was responding to a query prompted by speculation on the Internet, and on other news sites, as to whether his investigation cleared the ties of another U.S. Attorney, Todd Graves, who then headed Missouri’s Western District.

Graves' wife and brother-in-law have the fee-office contracts for a couple of the state’s most lucrative fee offices in western Missouri.

Cummins' point, which he would address only in general terms, was that he never looked into any of the operations in that part of the state.