The two Renzi investigations may actually be one very complicated one.

First of all, I'd like to thank Mike Newcomb for interviewing me on his radio program and zelph and Jeff Farias for setting it up.

The biggest thing that came out of it was some clarification of the latest Renzi scandal. It has been reported in the media as two seperate investigations, which is what I thought at first-- an investigation into Renzi steering Federal money to Mantech, his father's company, and another involving the Sandlin land deal.

In fact, the two are closely related. Sandlin's land which he sold for $4.5 million after Renzi announced the Federal land swap was a 480 acre parcel near the San Pedro river in southeastern Arizona. The deal later fell through when it turned out that the federal land they were going to swap for it included a population of pygmy owls. Now, the San Pedro river is an ecologically sensitive area so Renzi (despite his notable lack of interest in environmental issues) at first appeared to be protecting it. Where this ties into the other probe is that Mantech has a $400 million plus contract with Fort Huachuca, and Fort Huachuca was specifically exempted from having to maintain the water supply in the San Pedro river. And the sponsor of that bill (which is now law): Rick Renzi. So it is likely that the Federal investigators are working on a large and fairly complex investigation, and the NY Times and Washington Post articles which apparently described two different investigations are two ends of a probe working towards the middle, which is the San Pedro River.