Abscam--Interesting Random Facts

I'm currently reading The New Teen Titans Volume Four, which contains comic books originally published in 1982-1983.  One of the interesting things about reading old comic books is that it contains a lot of references to things that were once in the news, but are now forgotten.

At one point on p.38, the evil Brother Blood is talking to his politician Senator Hardy, and demanding to know why the Senator can't buy the necessary votes with the millions of dollars Senator Hardy has given him.  Senator Hardy responds "It's just that since ABSCAM things have been touchy.  It isn't as easy to offer bribes."

Hmmm, I thought, what is Abscam?

So, I googled it and, holy smokes!  

Abscam, sometimes written ABSCAM, was a Federal Bureau of Investigation sting operation in the late 1970s and early 1980s that led to the convictions of seven members from both chambers of the United States Congress and others for bribery and corruption.^[1] The two-year investigation initially targeted trafficking in stolen property and corruption of prominent business people, but later evolved into a corruption investigation. The FBI was aided by the United States Department of Justice and convict Mel Weinberg in videotaping politicians accepting bribes from a fictitious Arabian company in return for various political favors.^[2]

More than 30 political figures were investigated, and six members of the United States House of Representatives and one member of the United States Senate were convicted.^[3] One member of the New Jersey State Senate, members of the Philadelphia City Council, the Mayor of Camden, New Jersey, and an inspector for the Immigration and Naturalization Service were also convicted. 

Wow, they actually caught six House members and one US Senator red handed!  Crazy.

Go ahead and read the whole Wikipedia article.  The whole thing is wild.  

It's a reminder that political corruption existed long before Trump and Musk.  

It's also crazy how quickly this stuff gets forgotten.  This must have been huge news back in the day, and now, nobody even remembers it.

(Although, as always, I feel like I should check my own intuitions against that of my audience.  I had never heard of this before, but maybe that's just me.  Have you heard of this before?  Let me know in the comments.)