Michael “Ozzie” Myers

On 22 August 1979 Myers met the operatives at a hotel near JFK airport and accepted $50,000. He promised to help the sheikh with immigration, introduced the idea of influence with other officials and delivered the line that would follow him for the rest of his life: “Money talks in this business and bullshit walks.” He kept $15,000; middlemen took the rest. [1]

The steelman for Myers is the one he gave. He said he was playacting: the sheikh was a mark, he was taking money from a fool and never meant to do anything. The appeals court answered that selling a promise of official help is bribery even if the seller secretly plans to cheat the buyer. [4]

The House ethics committee heard the same argument and rejected it. On 2 October 1980 the House expelled him 376–30. He was the first member expelled since three were expelled in 1861 for joining the Confederacy. [3]

He was sentenced on 13 August 1981 to three years and a $20,000 fine. [2]

Myers never left Philadelphia politics. In 2022 he pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to stuff ballot boxes in the city’s primary elections between 2014 and 2018, paying an election judge to add votes for candidates, including judicial candidates, whose campaigns had paid Myers as a consultant. [1]

On 27 September 2022 he was sentenced to 30 months in prison and a $100,000 fine. [2]

Supporters of the old ABSCAM defense have long argued that Myers was a small-time pol caught in a federal show. The 2022 case does not prove anything about 1979. It does make the claim that he was an innocent man framed by the FBI harder to sustain.