EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Hatch's secret drug firm links

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By Jim McElhatton and Jerry Seper

EXCLUSIVE:

The pharmaceutical industry that long has benefited from Sen. Orrin G. Hatch's legislative efforts has directed large sums of money to a charity he helped found -- and still raises money for -- while also hiring the Republican lawmaker's son as a lobbyist.

Though Congress boasts that it is more transparent after passing new disclosure rules, Americans have had no way of knowing about the drugmakers' largesse to the charity, Utah Families Foundation. No way, that is, until a normally confidential tax filing was mistakenly released by the Internal Revenue Service to a nonprofit database last year.

The tax form, obtained by The Washington Times, shows that five pharmaceutical companies and the industry's main lobbying group wrote checks in 2007 to the Utah Families Foundation -- some as large as $40,000 -- that far exceed what they could give publicly to Mr. Hatch's campaigns.

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The donations, $172,500 in all, came at the same time that the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) was paying one of Mr. Hatch's sons, Scott, to be its lobbyist in Congress.

And if that weren't enough political intrigue, the tax-exempt charitable foundation, which the senator from Utah helped start in the 1990s and still vigorously supports, has been delinquent for nearly a decade in filing its required annual reports with Utah state officials, a review by The Times found.

The tale of the Utah Families Foundation provides fresh evidence that the campaign-finance limits and transparency reforms that President Obama demanded and that Congress enacted still leave avenues for interests to route large sums of money to lawmakers' favorite causes without disclosure.

"This could be more common than we know," said Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who now heads the political watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which first spotted the errantly released tax form.

"When companies need a member of Congress and they've already donated to their campaigns, they can make very large contributions to members' foundations," she said. "It's another way to curry favor with a member of Congress."