Our biggest story today is one we mentioned yesterday – McCain bundler Harry Sargeant III was labeled a “war profiteer” Thursday by Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, which is investigating Sargeant’s oil services company for overcharging the U.S military for oil it shipped to troops in Iraq. Read the whole story in our post from yesterday.

But what’s really generating some headlines today is lobbyist Vicki Iseman finally breaking her silence in an interview with National Journal. Iseman, you probably remember, was the subject of a New York Times piece early this year that alleged she had an affair with John McCain. Iseman strongly denies that claim today, and says the Times’ story nearly broke her. While there’s little in the way of news, it does offer an interesting look at both McCain’s time in the Senate and the inner workings (and dysfunctions) of his presidential campaign.

Finally, BusnessWeek reports on lobbyists for the three Detroit automakers, who are “pestering” both the McCain and Obama campaigns for a bailout for their struggling industry. Their biggest asset might be the electoral map: “Its hired guns point out that many auto plants are in battleground states—Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Missouri.”

Remember McCain bundler Harry Sargeant? We’ve discussed him plenty in the past. You might remember that his company, which ships oil into Iraq for use by American forces, was under Congressional investigation for overcharging the U.S. military.

Today, Rep. Henry Waxman, chair of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a letter that Sargeant’s International Oil Trading Limited “appears to have engaged in a reprehensible form of war profiteering.” That according to a report by MSNBC.com’s Aram Roston.

Waxman said that IOTC has made a $210 million profit off its oil-shipping contract, one it was able to obtain thanks to Sargeant’s business partner being brother-in-law to the king of Jordan (that business partner is now suing Sargeant). Most shocking of all, Waxman says that a huge chunk of that profit, $70 million, went right into Sargeant’s pocket.

John McCain has already returned $50,000 of the questionable contributions Sargeant helped round up. But now that Sargeant’s been slapped with the “war profiteer” label, McCain could find himself under more scrutiny and pressure to be up front about his relationship with Sargeant.

With the Obama campaign once again taking on McCain over the lobbyist issue, Joe Biden’s son Hunter announced this weekend that he was quitting his position as a lobbyist with his firm, Oldaker, Biden, & Belair. ABC News has the story.

On the ad war front, Obama released an ad this weekend taking aim at Bill Timmons, the Washington lobbyist McCain has named to head his transition team. (USA Today fact-checks the ad here.) According to Mike Allen of the Politico, this will be followed up by lobbyist-themed campaign events all over the country for the next few days.

And the Miami Herald takes another look at Harry Sargeant III, the Florida based businessman connected to a stream of unusual contributions to the McCain campaign. Reporters Dan Christensen and Scott Hiaasen say Sargeant “may be the most influential South Florida figure no one outside the corridors of power has ever heard of.”

The questions surrounding some of the bundlers working for the McCain campaign are so numerous that Campaign Money Watch decided today it was time for the Department of Justice to get involved by launching an investigation into donations collected by both Harry Sargeant III and Hess Oil executives.

In a letter sent to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Campaign Money Watch Director David Donnelly said both stories are important:

To underscore the high stakes of these distinct cases, please consider that one matter involves a person who is a major political fundraiser whose company is entrusted with a billion dollar government contract. The other matter involves executives and employees for a major oil corporation – a corporation that would benefit tremendously from a specific change in governmental energy policy recently advocated by Sen. McCain.

Read the full letter online.

The Harry Sargeant and DHL stories continue to make headlines today – the end of a “queasy two days” for the McCain campaign. About the only good news for John McCain is that it’s all happening the day the Olympics start. Here’s the roundup:

The McCain campaign says it will return about $50,000 in contributions connected to bundler and Florida businessman Harry Sargeant III, according to The Washington Post’s Matthew Mosk. Not only does it appear those contributions were solicited by a foreign national, but they also came from questionable sources, including a few people who say they don’t even like McCain or the GOP. (The Palm Beach Post’s Michael C. Bender provides local coverage as well.)

The New York Times has more on the Jordanian connection to the Sargeant story, including more about a lawsuit Sargeant faces from a former business partner, who’s also the brother-in-law of the country’s monarch.

And, according to The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, Sargeant’s company has also relied on lobbying services provided by a firm headed by former Ambassador Otto Reich – who turns out to be a prominent McCain advisor and donor.

The Sargeant story is even big in Israel – a number of the questionable McCain donors were Palestinian.

On a lighter note, NPR gives credit to Campaign Money Watch for breaking the Sargeant story, but we’ll have to decline – we did uncover all those Hess donations, however.

The AP also noted McCain’s money problems yesterday, but leads with his promise of a Justice Department investigation of a pending deal between DHL and UPS that would cost Wilmington, Ohio at least 8,000 jobs – McCain campaigned in the town Thursday. McCain and then-lobbyist/current campaign manager Rick Davis helped DHL land the original deal that gave it control of the Wilmington facility.

(Still going largely unreported is the fact that until March, UPS – which stands to gain enormously from a deal with DHL – was represented on Capitol Hill by John Green, who still talks to members of Congress as McCain’s congressional liaison and has the candidate’s ear.)

While McCain talked to workers whose jobs are at risk if the deal goes through, he didn’t exactly offer them much, the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s blog notes. McCain said, “I can’t assure you this train wreck won’t happen.”

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The AP is reporting that the McCain campaign is going to begin a review of donations brought in by Harry Sargeant III, the bundler who, as we’ve noted, has succeeded in gathering contributions to McCain through some unlikely sources.

Further questions about those donations were raised earlier today by The Washington Post’s Matthew Mosk, who wrote that because some of those donations were solicited by a foreign national – Sargeant’s business partner, Mustafa Abu Naba’a – they may have been collected in violation of federal election laws.

The AP’s report notes that the campaign is sending a letter regarding legal requirements to every donor who gave money through Sargeant. The letter states that the law prohibits donations from foreign nationals and that donations cannot be reimbursed.

No further word yet on what this investigation will entail, but we definitely plan to keep our eyes on it – and keep the pressure on the McCain campaign – to make sure its results are known.

Wednesday’s Washington Post story about McCain bundler Harry Sargeant III continues to resonate within both the traditional media and the blogosphere. The New York Times’ Michael Luo follows up on the story, focusing on Sargeant’s business partner, Mustafa Abu Naba’a. Abu Naba’a appears to be the driving force behind donations from some unlikely sources, including a man who called John McCain “a worse copy than Bush.”

As Talking Points Memo’s Greg Sargent and Eric Kleefeld have noted, Sargeant’s company has a contract to supply fuel to U.S. military in Iraq – a contract won due to the company’s ability to ship the fuel through Jordan. Turns out one of Sargeant’s former business partners is the brother-in-law of the King of Jordan. On top of that, that same business partner is now suing Sargeant and Abu Naba’a, claiming he didn’t get his fair share of profits from the deal. (News that something shady may have been taking place was noted as early as May, by NBC.)

Also ensnared in the story is Florida Gov. (and potential VP pick) Charlie Crist, The St. Petersburg Times’ Wes Allison and Steve Bousquet note. And guess who first arranged a meeting between McCain and Sargeant? None other than Brian Ballard, one of our featured lobbyists.

The pending DHL-UPS deal also remains in the news. The local paper in Wilmington, Ohio, which stands to lose at least 8,000 jobs if the deal goes through, says McCain is taking the issue “seriously.” Serious enough to tell us whether his congressional liaison (and former UPS lobbyist) John Green is coloring his judgment? We’ll see… though his meeting with workers who stand to lose their jobs will be behind closed doors, according to the Dayton Daily News.

Finally, lest you think that money’s influence in politics extends only to one side of the aisle, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi has a sobering reminder that the problem is a bipartisan one. Barack Obama may not be surrounded by a web of lobbyists, but he’s no stranger to big-money donors who expect something in return.

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