... A year ago, Portfolio magazine reported that Dodd was enjoying more than $800,000 in favorable loans from subprime mortgage titan Countrywide Financial as a member of the "Friends of Angelo." That was the exclusive club of borrowers given special treatment at the behest of Countrywide co-founder and president Angelo Mozilo. ...

The Friends of Angelo sweetheart deals have attracted the attention of prosecutors in Los Angeles and officials at the Justice Department in Washington. A lawyer familiar with the investigation of the Friends of Angelo scheme told the [Los Angeles] Times "the Justice Department appeared to be investigating whether the program amounted to improper influence-peddling by Countrywide and whether the politicians had failed to publicly report favors from Mozilo."

The Times suggests a familiar way out for the beleaguered Mozilo: trade testimony about the Friends of Angelo for a deal with prosecutors and other authorities. 

With the political atmosphere heavy with suspicion, Dodd obtained a new appraisal on his 10-acre waterfront home in Ireland after the unusual circumstances around his ownership of it were raised in this column in February. 

Dodd said Friday that a recent appraisal puts the value of the Irish Shangri-La at $658,000. That value is more than two years into the historic crash of the Irish real estate market. The maximum value of $250,000 that Dodd has been reporting each year in his Senate disclosure since 2002 - when he bought the two-thirds interest of his partner in the property, Kansas City, Mo., real estate developer William Kessinger - was seriously and repeatedly understated. ... 

Last month, Dodd told Newsweek he paid Kessinger $207,000. While Dodd continues to revise the details of that 2002 deal, an immutable, nagging fact remains: Dodd appears to have received from Kessinger a gift of hundreds of thousands of dollars, which he never reported, in the year after Dodd obtained a presidential pardon for their friend Downe.