The Federal Election Commission announced today that it will be receiving a check for $1 million from Cunningham briber Mitchell Wade and his former company MZM Inc. It’s the second-largest fine in the agency’s history. Wade broke the law when he used company funds to reimburse $78,000 in contributions that his employees and their spouses made to GOP Reps. Virgil Goode, and Katherine Harris.

The FEC’s investigation found that while some MZM employees felt pressure to contribute the company PAC, the pressure was created by the nature of MZM as a “highly-compartmentalized company run by a tempermental boss,” not any specific actions of Wade. MZM employees were motivated to make contributions “in part because of what they described as their fear of Wade’s volatile personality.”

This is something I drew out in my book. Wade had an unstable, paranoid and manic personality (He read his employee’s mail, among other things). It’s unclear whether keeping everything secret and constantly scheming was the result of this personality defect or the cause.

Also, here’s what former employee Roger Swinford was doing while at MZM, according to a letter his lawyer provided to the FEC:

“Roger was heavily involved with the intelligence planning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In January 2003, he learned that he was going to be deployed with the Central Command Deployable Headquarters to Qatar. While in Qatar, General Kimmons placed Roger in charge of the Iraq High Value Targets Cell, which was responsible for executing high value targeting against the Iraqi senior leadership, also known as the “Deck of Cards.”