Well, this land swap deal may burst wide open. It seems John McCain was helpful in assisting Del Webb by holding up legislation so the land swap deal could come to fruition. And it seems the McCain family have had their own little strip mall deal bring in some cash:

Senator McCain backed away from Keating, but the McCain clan hung on to one Keating perk much longer. In 1986, Keating cut McCain’s wife Cindy and father in-law James Hensley into a strip mall he was developing. When the mall sold two years ago, Hensley (the owner of a huge Anheuser-Busch distributorship that is McCain’s Number Two Career Patron) and Cindy McCain made a profit that reportedly fell somewhere between $100,000 and $1 million.

The senator’s Number Seven Career Patron, Del Webb Corporation, has engineered several controversial land swaps with the federal government. The U.S. House passed legislation in 1994 to expand Nevada’s Red Rock National Conservation Area. Part of the land that this bill would have preserved was a parcel that Del Webb wanted for a subdivision. The homebuilder had proposed that the feds swap that land for another parcel Del Webb owned. Exercising his senatorial prerogative, McCain put a “hold” on the bill, providing Del Webb lobbyists time to rally Nevada’s congressional delegation behind an alternative land swap deal that accommodated Del Webb.

Honestly, I do not see a smoking gun here. The Mall Deal could be completely on the up and up, and if reported it is fine. And McCain could have had many reasons put the hold on the bill – one of which could have been a request by his buddy Reid. But the mention of “The Keating Five” cannot bode well for anyone associated with this subject.