ABRAMOFF

=see tag14 tagscapt 12/18 bak (bak code fail 9/20)html aides is investigated=ROOTS OF ACADEMIC SUPPRESSION?:
=ROOTS/ORIGIN [MCCARTHY?]nina e art'l [gang of 5 bk?]After purging the moderates in the College Republican hierarchy, Abramoff and his team launched a series of events to build public support for Reagan's foreign policy. The first was its ''Poland Will Be Free" campaign to support the democracy movement then under siege by the Polish communist government.But in the eyes of the College Republicans, the Polish regime wasn't the only Moscow puppet -- so, too, were liberal student groups, the American media, leftist professors, and nuclear-freeze activists. Abramoff distributed on campuses 900 copies of a book called ''Target America," which posited that the Soviets had planted 4,000 journalist-agents in the American media to pursue a ''massive secret propaganda campaign," according to memos.A training manual from the period, which Reed helped to write, described Ralph Nader's network of Public Interest Research Groups on campus as ''tyrannical" and ''radical." Abramoff's team accused the United States Student Association -- a 350-chapter liberal campus group that in 1982 protested Reagan's student aid cuts -- of being a ''pro-Soviet, pro-terrorist, Marxist-Leninist organization." The manual advised boycotting ''Marxist" professors, and soliciting support from alumni college donors to oust them. the wrecking crew
grace commission p 43

JA win Mass for RR; cr foot soldiers

b to back belly to b, burn their bodies with napalm jelly yaf

got own Dir mkt funding,

then USA Fdn discover an indiv cd make $; hit campus groups amway coors funded, campbell's soup to hit students supporting union workers; oil co, bottlers

then  refined get corp $ to hit PIRGs (cheaper to nip in bud) 89 before staged anti-ussr demos b/c old farts liked

CFACT is rothbard spinoff for energy co's WA times

JA and How P help Ollie in congress spitz channell raises $ (much skimmed) iran contra

cozy with freedom fighters b/c validated rebel BS (also anti commie 62

vigurie had DM but also mult platform cross prom) radio, books, mags etc paper col  pal terry dolan sold results eg campaign finance limit regs ncpack nickpack: use DM to get $ for local hit ads 76  ads had lies but allowed cand to stay clean

kemp pimped for CR; they tried to get S afr to buy him 400K$ plane

IFF 86-93  S africa made crime to be commie  US declared ANC terrorists Rusel Chrystal //JA  Jamba woodstock for intil FF; savimbi no use after cold war, so same SA intel pvt army hunted him down Exec Outcomes

IFF trip: bi bob dornan, inhofe, j helms, phil crane, buz lukens, lichenstein D'Souza wrote for mag (later sil vly guru)

craig williamson SA spy infiltrated and became leader, got ppl jailed and killed

hayek award to vaclav klaus

personnel is policy; trotsky fought white army while stalin staffed up

heritage fdn rolodex for RR

 Going freelance, as Abramoff did with the USA Foundation, soon became a popular career move among the sons of Reagan. Ralph Reed launched a group called Students for America, a Southern outfit designed to bring evangelicals into the conservative mix. Students for a Better America, which warred on liberal professors, was set up by Steve Baldwin, also a onetime Abramoff lieutenant. The Conservative Youth Federation of America was launched by Amy Moritz, yet another Abramoff associate. And let us not forget the Conservative Action Foundation, the Conservative Student Support Foundation, and the mysterious Young Conservative Foundation, “America’s premier Human Rights organization.” It was through the USA Foundation that Abramoff seems to have discovered the profitable side of politics. The occasion for this discovery was the College Republicans’ ongoing war with Ralph Nader’s Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), student-activist outfits that were set up in the Seventies and funded at most colleges by “activity fees” that all students were required to pay unless they checked a box on a form. This was the point on which the CRs challenged them, insisting on campus after campus that it was “sinful and tyrannical” to compel students to fund an obviously political organization.
Like other Nader groups, the student PIRGs were something of a nuisance for business, and at some point it apparently occurred to Abramoff or Norquist that defunding and thus “killing” campus PIRG chapters was a service for which the targeted businesses ought to be paying. So the young entrepreneurs of the USA Foundation got out there and sold themselves as political hit men. According to one 1986 study, by the journalist Allan Nairn, the group managed to collect tribute from canning and bottling companies, two oil companies, an electric company (PIRGs were then working to set up utility watchdog groups), Amway, Coors, an assortment of San Francisco landlords worried about the possibility of rent control, [ur-prop 13?] and the Campbell Soup Company, which paid the USA Foundation to undermine a campus support group for a migrant farmworkers’ union. It was pugnacity for pay. The USA Foundation’s motto was “Promoting a free market of ideas on the nation’s campuses,” and here we encounter yet another of the Washington right’s signature lines. Like so many conservative ideas—anticommunism, for example—it sounds fine at first. A “free market of ideas” sounds like “free inquiry” or a “free exchange of ideas,” an environment in which hypotheses are tested and bad ones are weeded out while good ones go on to earn the respect of the community of scholars. But this is not what the phrase means at all. Markets do not determine the objective merit of things, only their price, which is to say, their merit in the eyes of large corporations and the very wealthy.
The point, and the profit, was in getting the people with money to understand which ideas served their common interests, which ones didn’t, and then to act together as a class—supporting the good ideas and crushing the liberal ones. This was a plan with legs: When I spoke to Grover Norquist in 2006, he was still insisting that businesses had to be instructed on big-picture thinking, on the amazing returns to be realized through funding conservatism. By then, of course, Grover Norquist was no longer some campus activist; he was the architect of the most effective defund-the-left program Washington has ever seen. And his old friend Jack Abramoff was on his way to jail.---<div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><a href="https://observer.com/2006/10/the-gaud-that-failed-a-tour-of-new-jack-city/">https://observer.com/2006/10/the-gaud-that-failed-a-tour-of-new-jack-city/</a>=<a href="https://billmoyers.com/story/jack-abramoff-does-it-again/">https://billmoyers.com/story/jack-abramoff-does-it-again/</a>june 2020
In 2006, Bill Moyers program Capitol Crimes untangled the web of relationships, secret deals, and political manipulation — including thousands of e-mails, reports, and facts on the record — and opened a window on the dark side of American politics. The documentary focused on <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/25/doj-charges-jack-abramoff-340434" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Jack Abramoff</a> and the so-called K Street Project. With his strong ties to the Republican National Committee, Christian Coalition, Tom DeLay and Grover Norquist, Abramoff ruled the money game in Washington. The only problem was, Abramoff got caught breaking almost every lobbying law.When he fell, scandal rocked Washington on a <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Senate_Investigates_the_Teapot_Dome_Scandal.htm" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Teapot Dome</a> scale. In 2006, Abramoff pleaded guilty to felony fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials. Part of his plea deal required him to provide evidence about members of Congress.In the wake of the scandal, Congress amended the Lobbying Disclosure Act to tighten restrictions on lobbying. Now, Abramoff stands accused of breaking the very rules he inspired. On June 2020, Abramoff pleaded guilty to the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/lobbyist-jack-abramoff-and-ceo-rowland-marcus-andrade-charged-fraud-connection-5" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Justice Department’s</a> charges of criminal conspiracy and failing to register as a lobbyist.  The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil charges as well. (<a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/lobbyist-jack-abramoff-and-ceo-rowland-marcus-andrade-charged-fraud-connection-5" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; text-decoration-line: none;">Read the Justice Department indictment</a>.)Watch this excerpt of Capitol Crimes to follow the story of Abramoff’s previous corrupt system: [vid]new cat resurrection:
omfg<a href="https://thinkprogress.org/green-new-deal-jack-abramoff-opposition-trump-ocasio-cortez-mcconnell-a9015688f09a/">https://thinkprogress.org/green-new-deal-jack-abramoff-opposition-trump-ocasio-cortez-mcconnell-a9015688f09a/</a>
Opposition to the Green New Deal is swiftly taking shape, with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff now attached to an effort targeting progressive initiatives including the sweeping resolution to combat climate change.A new political action committee (PAC) was launched on Feb. 7 — the Protect American Values PAC — according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) <a href="http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/C00696112/1315107/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">filings</a>. The New Jersey-based PAC was created by Elizabeth Curtis, whose LinkedIn describes her as a “political compliance associate.” Abramoff is listed as the PAC’s “honorary chairman.”According to the PAC’s FEC description, it “supports/opposes more than one Federal candidate.” And the PAC has already begun fundraising via emails to supporters.The effort to fight the Green New Deal through a serious PAC fundraising push comes as conservatives mobilize against the resolution. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has moved to call for a vote on the proposal in an effort to weaken Democratic support.aand Abramoff is wasting no time sending emails attacking the Green New Deal and other progressive agenda items on behalf of the PAC.“These socialists are so confused, and their messaging is getting worse by the minute. They seem to think that cows and airplanes are a threat to our future,” wrote Abramoff <a href="https://www.eenews.net/assets/2019/02/19/document_pm_03.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">in a Feb. 18 email</a> to subscribers, first shared by E&E. He went on to argue that the “radical Left” is working to “force their Green New Deal down your throat” in addition to other proposals, like a 70 percent marginal tax rate.<div class="related-contentwrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 2rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/green-new-deal-socialism-cow-farts-2020-trump-ocasio-cortez-markey-c9ca93effede/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><div class="related-contentbody" style="box-sizing: inherit; width: 513px;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/green-new-deal-socialism-cow-farts-2020-trump-ocasio-cortez-markey-c9ca93effede/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/green-new-deal-socialism-cow-farts-2020-trump-ocasio-cortez-markey-c9ca93effede/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; 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text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/green-new-deal-socialism-cow-farts-2020-trump-ocasio-cortez-markey-c9ca93effede/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/green-new-deal-socialism-cow-farts-2020-trump-ocasio-cortez-markey-c9ca93effede/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/green-new-deal-socialism-cow-farts-2020-trump-ocasio-cortez-markey-c9ca93effede/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;">‘Radical socialism’ and ‘cow farts’: Green New Deal opponents lash out as resolution gains momentum</a></h3></div></div>“Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t even in diapers when I started fighting the Left, and I’m about to teach her and her cronies a few things they are going to wish they never learned,” Abramoff wrote in his Monday email.In reaction to the email, Green New Deal supporter Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) pointed to the lobbyist’s scandal-ridden past <a href="https://twitter.com/brianschatz/status/1098013492412481536" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">in a tweet on Tuesday</a>. “If you are undecided on the Green New Deal one data point is that Jack Abramoff has started a super PAC against it,” Schatz wrote.Indeed, the move marks a dramatic return to the public eye for Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to charges including fraud, conspiracy, and tax evasion over a decade ago. A lifelong conservative who built strong ties with Republican lawmakers and other officials, Abramoff infamously over-billed Native American tribes for casino lobbying, in addition to conspiring to bribe public officials, actions that ultimately led to his imprisonment.After a six-year prison sentence, Abramoff railed against lobbying and began working as an accountant at a kosher pizza restaurant — a move he touted as an effort to distance himself from money and politics.But he soon returned to lobbying, working to arrange meetings between President Donald Trump and international officials in countries like the Republic of Congo. He <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/12/nra-leader-jack-abramoff-gop-operative-russian-spy-maria-butina-lobbying/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">has also been linked to alleged Russian spy Maria Butina</a> — her partner, Paul Erickson, is a long-time friend and business partner of Abramoff. [vid]and while Abramoff’s Twitter still describes him <a href="https://twitter.com/jackabramoff" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">as a “former” lobbyist</a>, he is currently registered as one — and now appears to be turning his attention to fighting efforts like the Green New Deal.Daniel Auble, a senior researcher with the nonpartisan nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics, told ThinkProgress on Wednesday that Abramoff’s history is likely to attract heightened scrutiny.“Obviously, his past political fundraising was not just problematic but criminal so we will keep a close eye on whatever he does,” Auble said. “Coordination is always a concern with super PACs meaning any return to lobbying activities would warrant even further scrutiny.”Introduced two weeks ago by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), the Green New Deal resolution serves as a blueprint for what many climate activists hope will be a host of policy efforts to massively decarbonize the U.S. economy within a decade.The resolution is backed by progressive groups like the youth-led nonprofit Sunrise Movement, who say the proposal is currently the only roadmap being offered to help the United States avoid a dangerous threshold of global warming. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in 2018 that the world only had about 12 years left before reaching that tipping-point.When it was a progressive talking point during the 2018 primaries, conservative figures largely ignored the Green New Deal. But since the resolution’s introduction, opposition has grown rapidly.Much of that hinges on the bungled release of a “frequently asked questions” document circulated by Ocasio-Cortez’s office. The fact sheet called for dramatically reducing air flights and scaling back “farting cows” in agriculture — both significant sources of greenhouse gases.While Ocasio-Cortez’s office has downplayed the document and removed it from the representative’s website, Green New Deal opponents <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/green-new-deal-socialism-cow-farts-2020-trump-ocasio-cortez-markey-c9ca93effede/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">seized on its contents immediately</a>, with even Trump tweeting that the proposal would “permanently eliminate all Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military[.]”And now Abramoff’s email on behalf of Protect American Values — entitled “More cows, less Democrats” — also draws on the contents of this document.It’s unclear whether labeling the Green New Deal a “socialist” effort aimed at hurting farmers and prioritizing train travel will prove a winning strategy. But it is proving an easy messaging tactic. A number of Republican lawmakers have already seized on the furor over the fact sheet and are working to make the Green New Deal a losing issue for supporters.Part of this effort came last week when McConnell called for a vote in the Senate on the Green New Deal resolution. The move is widely understood to be intended to force Democrats into an uncomfortable position of clarifying their support for the climate initiative. Support for the Green New Deal has ranged among Democrats, with some enthusiastically backing it and others expressing more tepid backing.<div class="related-contentwrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 2rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><div class="related-contentbody" style="box-sizing: inherit; width: 513px;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; 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text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><h3 class="related-contenttitle" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 2rem; margin: 0px;"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;" /><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/experts-green-new-deal-resolution-ocasio-cortez-infrastructure-85ff057dd235/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border: none; display: flex;">Green New Deal’s path forward could lie in infrastructure legislation, experts say</a></h3></div></div>A number of 2020 presidential contenders, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Kamala Harris (D-CA), co-sponsored the resolution but its specifics remain vague as does what support could ultimately entail. Some Democrats have moreover expressed skepticism about components of the resolution, something McConnell wants to make clear with a Senate vote, one that could fracture the opposition party in the Republican-controlled chamber.While only 12 senators have endorsed the Green New Deal, Democrats <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/430309-gop-sees-green-new-deal-as-weapon-against-dems" target="_blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(144, 141, 255);">have largely united</a> in critiquing McConnell’s vote effort and slamming the majority leader’s threats. And Ocasio-Cortez has dismissed it as an attempt to “stop this freight train of momentum” powering the Green New Deal.<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/jack-abramoff-tries-to-grift-off-anti-green-new-deal-effort">https://www.thedailybeast.com/jack-abramoff-tries-to-grift-off-anti-green-new-deal-effort</a>pAYwall...ck Abramoff is out there raising money for a conservative political group that aims to kill Democrats’ controversial Green New Deal proposal. At least he’s trying to; in spite of his household name status, the disgraced former lobbyist doesn’t seem to be having much luck.
<a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060121505">https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060121505</a>2/19After a brief stint in campaign finance reform, disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff is now fundraising in support of conservative candidates by attacking an ambitious effort to combat climate change."These socialists are so confused, and their messaging is getting worse by the minute," Abramoff said yesterday in a fundraising pitch for the newly created Protect American Values political action committee."They seem to think that cows and airplanes are a threat to our future. Sounds to me like they have been infected by Mad Cow Disease!" he wrote in an <a href="https://www.eenews.net/assets/2019/02/19/document_pm_03.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; font-weight: bold;">email</a> with the subject line "More cows, less Democrats."Abramoff was listed in the email as the "honorary chairman" of the super PAC, an independent group that can raise and spend unlimited sums of money to advocate for or against political candidates.A Federal Election Commission <a href="http://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/C00696112/1315107/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; font-weight: bold;">filing</a> shows the group was created earlier this month by Liz Curtis, a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/liz-curtis-b00209158/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; font-weight: bold;">self-described</a> "political compliance consultant" based in New Jersey. She is also listed as the group's treasurer and recordkeeper.Abramoff's new position with the Protect American Values PAC appears to be somewhat of a return to form for the lifelong conservative. Abramoff got his start in politics as chairman of the Massachusetts Alliance of College Republicans, while he was an undergraduate at Brandeis University. In that role, he organized student volunteers for Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign."[Rep.] Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wasn't even in diapers when I started fighting the Left, and I'm about to teach her and her cronies a few things they are going to wish they never learned — and it won't just be a math lesson," he said. Abramoff was referring to the Democratic socialist from New York, who was born in 1989 and introduced the "Green New Deal" climate resolution (<a href="https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/hres109/BILLS-116hres109ih.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; font-weight: bold;">H. Res. 109</a>)."As President Trump continues to implement his agenda to Keep America Great, we must rise to the occasion and ensure that the Left NEVER wins at the ballot box again. Help me get the job done," he said.The email included several links to a <a href="https://secure.anedot.com/protectamericanvalues/18292" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; font-weight: bold;">donation page</a> for the super PAC, which currently has no website of its own.In 2006, Abramoff began serving a six-year sentence for mail fraud, conspiracy to bribe public officials and tax evasion related to overbilling Native American tribes for casino lobbying.When he left federal prison owing $44 million in restitution, Abramoff initially began preaching the need to break the link between lobbying and campaign cash. That included penning the book "Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America's Most Notorious Lobbyist."Abramoff also met with good-government advocates he had long opposed. He told reformers that he believed government would work better if "no lobbyist, or someone gaining something from Washington that the rest of us don't have, basically a special interest, can give any money politically," <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2012/02/07/146553230/jack-abramoff-make-congressional-candidates-sign-pledge-for-reform" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; font-weight: bold;">NPR reported</a> at the time.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In the years since then, however, Abramoff has worked his way back into Republican political circles. He began working with former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) in late 2016 to schedule a meeting between President Trump and the controversial president of the Republic of Congo, according to Department of Justice <a href="https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6439-Exhibit-AB-20170621-1.pdf" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;">records</a>.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Abramoff's return to lobbying prompted lawmakers to pass the Justice Against Corruption on K Street Act, or JACK Act (<a href="https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/s2896/BILLS-115s2896enr.pdf" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;">S. 2896</a>). Enacted in January, the law from Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) would require convicts like Abramoff to disclose their criminal history when they re-register to lobby.Abramoff may have also helped facilitate the transfer of money between South Dakota conservative consultant Paul Erickson and Maria Butina, who recently pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States. Both Erickson and Butina have been linked to the special counsel's Russian investigation and hit with federal charges.In 2017, Erickson sent two wires for $15,000 to a California company established by the son and brother of Abramoff, according to <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/maria-butina-paul-erickson-suspicious-bank-money-russia" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; font-weight: bold;">BuzzFeed News</a>. Bank investigators reportedly flagged it as a possible shell company established to hide Jack Abramoff's interests.Money in politics watchdogs are likely to keep a close eye on the Protect American Values PAC to ensure it isn't mainly used to benefit Abramoff. At this early stage, it's difficult to tell whether the committee is a legitimate political action committee or a so-called scam PAC, a group that claims to be raising money for political campaigns but spending little to none of its proceeds on politics."Super PACs are intended to be for outside expenditures around candidates and parties," said Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen's vice president of legislative affairs. "If we found out that instead it was paying his salary, which he was in turn using to pay off his debt, that would be a big problem."Gilbert, who appeared on a 2012 campaign finance reform panel with Abramoff, and other public interest advocates are still unsure what to make of his unusual career trajectory."People are of differing opinions about whether his conversion to good-government reformer was sincere or not," she said. "Taking it most charitably, if you would think that it is, this particular scenario that we're outlining certainly would be a bridge too far. And if we think he isn't, maybe he'll try to push the envelope and get away with more."Curtis and Abramoff didn't immediately respond to several requests for comment.But in the Protect American Values PAC fundraising email, Abramoff seemed prepared for any scrutiny his name is likely to bring to the group.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">"After they read this letter, the Fake news media and their friends on the Left (especially the Congressional Democrats) will start attacking me personally — but I'm ready for them," he said. "In fact, I am encouraging them to spend time targeting ME, Jack Abramoff, instead of our conservative candidates, who need to focus on retaking the House and keeping the Senate."12/18 bro hides $ shellThe NRA’s cozy ties with RussiaIn December 2015, Butina’s Russian gun-rights organization called the Right to Bear Arms sponsored an NRA delegation to Moscow where attendees met with influential Russian officials including former deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin who had been under U.S. sanctions since 2014.The convoy to Moscow <a href="http://time.com/4696424/moscow-right-kremlin-republicans/" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">included</a> Keene, Trump campaign surrogate Sheriff David Clarke, president and CEO of the Outdoor Channel Jim Liberatore, soon-to-be NRA president Peter Brownell and NRA donors Jim Gregory, Arnold Goldschlager and Hilary Goldschlager.Alexander Torshin — a Russian politician and longtime associate of Butina who has since come under U.S. sanctions — played a key role in the trip and, allegedly, Russia’s decade-long operation infiltrating American conservative groups. A conservative Nashville lawyer named G. Kline Preston IV who has done business in Russia <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-the-republican-right-found-allies-in-russia/2017/04/30/e2d83ff6-29d3-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">claims</a> that he first introduced David Keene to Torshin in 2011 while Keene was NRA president.Keene and Torshin quickly forged an alliance based on mutual interests.“Just a brief note to let you know just how much I enjoyed meeting in Pittsburgh during the NRA annual meeting,” Keene <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/inside-the-decade-long-russian-campaign-to-infiltrate-the-nra-and-help-elect-trump-630054/" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">wrote</a> in a 2011 letter later obtained by anti-corruption activists in Russia that extended a personal invitation to the NRA’s conference the following year.Keene added, “If there is anything any of us can do to help you in your endeavors . . . please don’t hesitate to let us know.”“We will start organizing our own Russian NRA,” Torshin <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/inside-the-decade-long-russian-campaign-to-infiltrate-the-nra-and-help-elect-trump-630054/" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">tweeted</a> shortly thereafter.In 2011, Maria Butina became founding chair of a new Russian gun rights group called the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/she-was-like-a-novelty-how-alleged-russian-agent-maria-butina-gained-access-to-elite-conservative-circles/2018/07/17/1bb62bbc-89d2-11e8-a345-a1bf7847b375_story.html?utm_term=.fc61846e9ed5" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Right to Bear Arms</a>.By 2013, Keene was introduced as an honored guest at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tj-ceQb9Ao" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Right to Bear Arms</a> conference in Moscow. “There are no peoples that are more alike than Americans and Russians,” Keene <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/inside-the-decade-long-russian-campaign-to-infiltrate-the-nra-and-help-elect-trump-630054/" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">said</a>. “We’re hunters. We’re shooters. We value the same kinds of things… we need to work together.”Erickson accompanied Keene to the 2013 conference, where he reportedly first crossed paths with Butina.Senate intelligence and finance committees have reportedly <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/senate-intelligence-wants-documents-on-nras-russia-trip" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">requested</a> documents on the NRA’s connections to Russia, including documents related to whether the NRA took Russian money and the 2015 delegation. After spending a <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/11/nra-in-the-red/" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">record</a> $54.4 million to put President Donald Trump in the White House and support Republicans in Congress, the NRA’s membership dues dropped precipitously the following year.Although the NRA’s lawyers initially denied the Russian money, they eventually <a href="https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/wyden-wants-answers-on-nras-moscow-trip" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">admitted</a> to receiving “a total of approximately $2,512.85 from people associated Russian addresses” and “about $525” from two Russian nationals living in the United States in a letter to <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cid=N00007724&cycle=Career" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Sen. Ron Wyden</a> (D-Ore.).The NRA also acknowledged “membership dues” from Torshin, who has been a non-voting life member of the NRA since 2012 — the year after he first connected with Keene.Even after his term as president of the NRA, Keene has maintained a cozy relationship with the gun rights organization. Keene is still listed as a director on the NRA’s’ board paid $32,000 last year for working an average of one hour per week, according to a <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/11/nra-in-the-red/" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">new tax return</a> reviewed by the Center for Responsive Politics.Keene’s wife, in collaboration with Erickson, reportedly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/02/us/politics/maria-butina-russian-spy.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">offered</a> Butina $1 million to help secure 5 million barrels of Russian jet fuel — nearly two times all of Russia’s refineries exports in a month — in an unsuccessful scheme to sell the fuel through an American middleman in 2017.Keene’s history as a foreign agentAmidst all of the buzz surrounding his ties to alleged Russian agent Maria Butina, NRA board member and former NRA president David Keene took a different approach, registering as a foreign agent representing the interests of the government of Algeria.Unlike Butina and Erickson, who are alleged to be Russian agents under Section 951, Keene has now registered as a foreign agent under FARA.This is hardly the first time Keene has had a hand in foreign influence operations.Keene kicked off his first registered foreign lobbying and influence shop, <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/fara/results?foreign-principal=&location=&order=desc&page=1&query=&registrant=Keene%2C+Shirley+%26+Assoc&sort=stamped" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Keene, Shirley & Associates</a>, in 1987 by inking a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5267235-3997-Exhibit-AB-19870601-D1HDIO04.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">$60,000-per-year contract</a> with the National Farmers’ Federation of Australia before signing on to represent Nicaraguan interests the following year. The firm’s <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5267237-3997-Exhibit-C-19870601-D1HDIC04.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">board of directors</a> included Keene’s wife, Diana, and another political consultant named Craigan Shirley.Perhaps most well-known is Keene’s lobbying for Nigeria and Algeria — which was disclosed under the <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmlbs.php?id=D000032355&year=2006" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Lobbying Disclosure Act</a>. Keene went on to lobby for a broad array of interests, including the <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=F217978%20%20%20&year=2000" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">World Wrestling Federation</a>.Now David Keene has again registered as a foreign agent, according to FARA filings made available through CRP’s <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/fara/" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Foreign Lobby Watch</a> tool.Outlining the terms of their $360,000 lobbying agreement, Algeria’s government issued a cheeky press release titled “Algeria is Keen on NRA Alum Keene.”One chapter of Keene’s lobbying history has made even fewer headlines: The time he, Paul Erickson and Jack Abramoff were lobbying for a widely recognized dictator’s entry into the United States.Erickson and Abramoff had been longtime friends whose professional lives often intertwined. After college Republicans, Erickson and Abramoff went on to do more than just develop the anti-Communist Dolph Lundgren flick <a href="https://twitter.com/annalecta/status/1019666037330141184" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Red Scorpion</a> together.In 1995, Erickson obtained a $30,000 contract for a six-week stint lobbying for entrance into the United States on behalf of Mobutu Sese Seko, the president of the Republic of Congo during the Rwandan genocide who was widely referenced as a military dictator. Mobutu had been banned from the entering the United States after he developed political ties while working as a journalist then formed an authoritarian regime. He was notorious for corruption, nepotism, and embezzlement between $4 and $15 billion during his reign as well as widespread human rights violations.As Abramoff noted in the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5253418-5020-Supplemental-Statement-19951130-DM0IAT91.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">FARA disclosures</a>, he was “under no illusion we are dealing with Thomas Jefferson.”The official foreign principal who hired Erickson’s firm was Andre Soussan, a “Danish citizen residing in Paris who is a close political advisor to President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire,” according to the FARA disclosures obtained by CRP.Soussan reportedly “acted as an intermediary for President Mobutu’s quest for a U.S. visa,” which entailed rallying together members of Congress to write letters of support and “employment of Mr. Keene to assist in Andrew Soussan’s visa quest.” But the FARA disclosures discovered through Foreign Lobby Watch’s full-text search feature show Soussan played little role in the operation.In the FARA disclosure, Abramoff argued that negotiations in the United States, “where Mobutu has few or no friends — would be less susceptible to manipulation.” U.S. officials did not agree, reportedly pushing back that Mobutu merely wanted to sanitize his image by appearing to support democratic reforms so he could stage controlled elections and further consolidate his power.The State Department ultimately rejected Mobutu’s entrance into the United States. He stayed in power until he was expelled in 1997.Abramoff has again been <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/maria-butina-paul-erickson-suspicious-bank-money-russia" style="box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">implicated</a> in Erickson’s schemes related to Butina, though the full extent and scope of Abramoff’s role is unclear.Anti-fraud investigators at Wells Fargo bank, acting on a tip from federal investigators, flagged potentially suspicious bank transfers from an account held jointly by Butina and Erickson to what appeared to be a shell company tied to Abramoff’s family. Erickson sent wire transfers for $15,000 to a California company incorporated in March 2017 out of the home of Abramoff’s son who is listed as its CEO and sole director while Abramoff’s brother is the registered agent.A tale of two types of foreign agent...115th 2017 undo abramoff reforms: https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-01-03/house-gop-votes-to-strip-ethics-office-of-independent-status House Republicans dropped their bid to weaken the independent Office of Congressional Ethics after President-elect Donald Trump blasted the move as counter to his call to "drain the swamp" of corruption in Washington. The amendment was stripped from a rules package by voice vote, three lawmakers said, in a last-minute meeting called Tuesday as criticism mounted. The controversy over the office that investigates lawmakers’ alleged misconduct was starting to overshadow the opening of the 115th Congress, normally a day of glad-handing as lawmakers bring family members to the floor to join the festivities. FollowDonald J. Trump ?@realDonaldTrumpWith all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it7:03 AM - 3 Jan 2017 5,5335,533 Retweets  17,96517,965 likesFollowDonald J. Trump ?@realDonaldTrump........may be, their number one act and priority. Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance! #DTS7:07 AM - 3 Jan 2017 5,0345,034 Retweets  18,74118,741 likes
 "We have got just a tremendous number of calls to our office here and district offices concerned about this," said Representative Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican. The House GOP voted behind closed doors Monday night to make the independent office “subject to oversight” by the House Ethics Committee and significantly restrict its powers. The three lawmakers who confirmed the amendment was dropped were Mo Brooks of Alabama, Darrell Issa of California and Bill Flores of Texas. “People could have concerns” after Trump criticized the GOP’s move, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California told reporters before the meeting. “With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it may be, their number one act and priority,” Trump wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning. “Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance!’ He closed his tweet with “#DTS,” a reference to his campaign promise to “drain the swamp." The change was to be part of a broader House rules package that the House plans to approve Tuesday as members open the 115th Congress. The reversal doesn’t mean the effort to change the ethics office is dead. Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, said leadership promised a bipartisan solution by August to resolve some lawmakers’ concerns about the ethics office. "I think people just did not want this story on opening day," he said. Monday night’s vote on the amendment, proposed by Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, had come amid broader calls from Trump for steps to fight corruption in Washington, including term limits on lawmakers and restrictions on lobbyists. “Republicans claim they want to ‘drain the swamp,’ but the night before the new Congress gets sworn in, the House GOP has eliminated the only independent ethics oversight of their actions," Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said in a statement. "Evidently, ethics are the first casualty of the new Republican Congress." Earlier Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan defended the change in a statement that insisted the ethics office would still “operate independently.” “The evenly divided House Ethics Committee will now have oversight of the complaints office,” said Ryan of Wisconsin. He said the House panel would exercise that oversight only to "ensure the office is properly following its rules and laws," and said he instructed the House committee not to "interfere with the office’s investigations or prevent it from doing its job." ‘Abuse’ of Process Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to the president-elect, said earlier Tuesday she hadn’t discussed the vote with Trump, who used the anti-corruption slogan on the campaign trail yet has been silent so far on the House measure. But she said it could be compatible with his rhetoric. "One thing they’re trying to curb is the abuse of the process," Conway said on MSNBC, adding that much depends on the new ethics office that will be created. She said that constituents’ concerns could still be addressed. The vote prompted protests from government watchdog groups, including those who had pushed for creation of the OCE in 2008. Those groups had said at the time that the Ethics Committee wasn’t diligent enough in policing and punishing member wrongdoing on its own. Project on Government Oversight Executive Director Danielle Brian condemned the change in a statement that said, "Ethics watchdogs like OCE need to be strengthened and expanded -- not taken out back and shot in the middle of the night.” Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and frequent Trump critic, said on Fox News Radio he stands "with Trump. I mean, it’s the dumbest frickin’ thing I’ve ever heard." He added, "This is not the message the House needs to send." Preliminary Reviews The idea behind the OCE was that an independent office could provide preliminary, independent reviews of ethics accusations against members of Congress and make recommendations about whether further investigation by the Ethics Committee was necessary. Kee"OCE is one of the outstanding ethics accomplishments of the House of Representatives, and it has played a critical role in seeing that the congressional ethics process is no longer viewed as merely a means to sweep problems under the rug," said Norman Eisen and Richard Painter, the chairman and vice chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, in a joint statement. "If the 115th Congress begins with rules amendments undermining OCE, it is setting itself up to be dogged by scandals and ethics issues for years and is returning the House to dark days when ethics violations were rampant and far too often tolerated." But the office has its detractors, including lawmakers and staffers on both sides of the aisle who claimed they have been unfairly treated. And there have been public turf wars with the Ethics Committee itself. "There’s been numerous examples, and we heard some of them in there today, of members who have falsely been accused by this group who had to spend a fortune to have their good name restored," said Representative Hal Rogers of Kentucky, who said he supported the measure. "I think there has been an abuse." Some House Republicans, including Representative Dennis Ross of Florida, said there had been some concerns raised during the closed-door meeting Monday night of the optics of placing new limitations on a government watchdog days before Trump takes office. But he said the majority of the Republicans felt it was time to fix problems with the OCE. Leaders Opposed Ryan and McCarthy were among those who argued against the amendment, according to a lawmaker in the room who spoke on condition of anonymity. Ryan’s statement didn’t disclose his position during the private debate. On Tuesday morning, McCarthy confirmed on MSNBC he had opposed the approval of the amendment but said he would vote for the rules package that contained it. McCarthy told reporters later Tuesday he agreed with Trump’s tweet. Trump made "the same argument I made in conference," McCarthy told reporters. He said on MSNBC the changes had earlier had bipartisan support to make investigations more fair. "One thing we firmly believe in America is due process," he added. "People have a right to defend themselves if they’re being accused of something." In a statement, Goodlatte described his amendment as one that would "build" on the OCE’s strengths, while also improving upon "the due-process rights for individuals under investigation, as well as witnesses called to testify." "The OCE has a serious and important role in the House, and this amendment does nothing to impede their work," he said. Other changes would include requiring that any matter potentially involving a violation of criminal law be referred to the Ethics Committee. The OCE also would be barred from considering anonymous complaints, and its jurisdiction would be limited to the last three Congresses. ==

nina e paper art'l

That lack of trust extended to finances. Memos from the period revealed Abramoff's intense focus on fund-raising and his readiness to use the connections of his Beverly Hills based-father, a Diners Club executive with connections to Reagan's kitchen cabinet.

''Alfred Bloomingdale, a close personal friend of my family, told me to contact you immediately," Abramoff wrote to Roy Cohn, Joseph McCarthy's one-time counsel, on July 8, 1981. ''Although we are an arm of the RNC, we must become financially self-sufficient."

Abramoff added that ''because of his close association with the President, Mr. Bloomingdale was able to free up the RNC contributor list for our use. Within the next couple of weeks, we must raise $50,000 in order to mail and phone bank these lists. I have no doubt that we will pyramid that $50,000, to over $1 million within the first year."

</div>

Bond, now a former RNC official, characterized Abramoff's assertion that he had gained access to the RNC contributor list as ''outside the realm of reality. That list is like the Holy Grail . . . You can see his early prevarication."

Bloomingdale died in 1982.

...

After purging the moderates in the College Republican hierarchy, Abramoff and his team launched a series of events to build public support for Reagan's foreign policy. The first was its ''Poland Will Be Free" campaign to support the democracy movement then under siege by the Polish communist government.

But in the eyes of the College Republicans, the Polish regime wasn't the only Moscow puppet -- so, too, were liberal student groups, the American media, leftist professors, and nuclear-freeze activists. Abramoff distributed on campuses 900 copies of a book called ''Target America," which posited that the Soviets had planted 4,000 journalist-agents in the American media to pursue a ''massive secret propaganda campaign," according to memos.

A training manual from the period, which Reed helped to write, described Ralph Nader's network of Public Interest Research Groups on campus as ''tyrannical" and ''radical." Abramoff's team accused the United States Student Association -- a 350-chapter liberal campus group that in 1982 protested Reagan's student aid cuts -- of being a ''pro-Soviet, pro-terrorist, Marxist-Leninist organization." The manual advised boycotting ''Marxist" professors, and soliciting support from alumni college donors to oust them.

</div>

===

wrecking crew: JA and GN retooled CR; started own direct mail $, PO's RNC who kicked them out of bldg (prev had funded) p 80-  lots of anti commie campus stunts b/c donors liked

kemp signed Dir mail

US Student Assoc hired muscle: campbell's soup to harrass pro migr farm gp; bottlers pay to attack PIRGs; GN says for $20k, he can disrupt 10 pirgs and cost them 100K

mkts do not measure value, only price

---

0/Dec/2011

The wrecking crew:

How a gang of right-wing con men destroyed Washington and made a killing

By Thomas Frank  harpers aug 2008

http://harpers.org/archive/2008/08/0082132

...Conservatism-as-revolution was not always such a ridiculous idea. In the Fifties and Sixties, conservatism was widely regarded as a deluded relic of an earlier age. The Republican Party itself was dominated at that time by its moderate faction, which conservatives defeated only after a titanic struggle spanning many years. Then, in the Seventies, right-wing insurgencies spread across the country: conservative cliques took control of the Southern Baptists and the National Rifle Association, and in 1978 the first of a wave of tax revolts shook California. In 1981 came the turn of the College Republicans, where the right-wing takeover was led by none other than the future supercorruptionist Jack Abramoff. This uprising holds special significance for the historian, since it not only introduces us to the cast of characters who went on to dominate Washington during the Gingrich and Bush eras but also provides a window into the conservative soul.

The story begins in 1980, the year of the “Reagan Revolution,” when there appeared on the national scene a phenomenon that bewildered political observers: legions of politicized, energetic college students who were conservatives rather than liberals or radicals, as had been typical in the two decades previous. And not only were their politics deeply square but the idol of this unlikely youth craze was the oldest president ever. Reagan’s entire Pennsylvania campaign, for example, was run by a lad of twenty. In 1984, the aged actor won 60 percent of the college-student vote. The historical turnabout was irresistible, and Reagan Youth became one of the great journalistic clichés of the period, powering hundreds of newspaper columns and at least one beloved TV sitcom.

These sons of Reagan had a strong sense of generational self-awareness, and they loudly told the world how they had come by it. In the midst of the interminable Iran hostage crisis, a crowd of them at one college campus were supposedly so moved by a showing of Patton that they demonstrated spontaneously in favor of a nuclear attack on that country, shaking the ivory tower with chants of “First strike now!” Another well-known story of the era was how a bunch of privileged kids at Dartmouth College, a traditional fortress of privilege, decided that embracing the traditional politics of privilege and mimicking the traditional manners of the privileged were actually acts of great daring, exposing them to persecution by tyrannical liberals. Then there was Jack Abramoff, a College Republican leader in the Boston area who gained, according to the John Birch Society’s Review of the News, a “reputation as one of the most innovative of the national Conservative youth leaders” after he mounted such a massive grassroots push for Reagan in 1980 that he almost single-handedly shifted Massachusetts into the Republican column.

Abramoff, a burly fellow from Beverly Hills, came to Washington in 1981 to assume the chairmanship of the College Republican National Committee. Back in the Vietnam days it had been leftists who fought the power, he explained to reporters. But “now we’re the campus radicals.” His newly energized College Republicans (CRs) fanned out across the nation, instructing clean-cut kids on how to use the tactics of the Sixties left for their own causes. A snapshot of Abramoff using a bullhorn to rally a conservative throng was proudly reproduced in the CRs’ Annual Report for 1983, just across the page from a photo of Ralph Reed, who was then Abramoff’s right-hand man, pumping his fist at the head of a swarm of angry, sign-waving conservatives. In both instances the young men had gone into action wearing neckties.

It was Abramoff’s friend Grover Norquist, then a recent graduate of Harvard Business School, who came up with a plan for changing the very nature of the College Republicans. Norquist made a study of the CRs, developing a scheme to transform them from “a resume-padding social club,” as one account puts it, into “an ideological, grassroots organization.” Abramoff made Nor-quist the College Republicans’ executive director, and the two put Norquist’s theory into action. They purged the “old guard.” They amended the group’s constitution, establishing a structure that made the Washington office more powerful, and rewarded proselytizing on campus.

What the rising conservative sensibility of those years treasured above all else was “confrontation” with the left. It called for a quasi-military victory over liberalism; it would have no truck with civility or fair play; and it made heroes out of outrage-courting lib-fighters like Reagan’s communications director Pat Buchanan, the organizer Howard Phillips, and the young Jack Abramoff.

The first and most noticeable characteristic of this new militancy was an air of swaggering truculence. There are, of course, bullies from every walk of life and every political persuasion, but on the right bullying holds a special, exalted position. It is no accident that two of the movement’s greatest heroes—Tom DeLay and Oliver North—had the same nickname: “the Hammer.”

Jack Abramoff filled this bill perfectly. He had reportedly been something of a bully in high school and had now grown into a “hard-charging” and “dynamic” leader, in the assessment of conservative magazines, an ass-kicking weight lifter who could quiet the commies with his fists if they got out of line. The gangster fetish of his later years is by now familiar to the whole world—his constant references to The Godfather, his black trench coat and fedora, his Meyer Lansky memorabilia, the murderer argot that will no doubt serve him and his friends well during their prison years.

Abramoff himself derided the moderates he had ousted from control of the CRs as “wishy-washy country-clubbers” and insisted that he had transformed the organization into an “ideological, well-trained, aggressive, conservative” outfit. “Fighting the Left with a goal of victory” became the official, stated purpose of his College Republican cadres, according to an essay Abramoff wrote for the group’s 1983 Annual Report. The CRs were “fighting America’s last stand,” he blustered; they would “defund the enemy wherever possible,” one of his lieutenants added. According to the journalist Nina Easton, CR officers had their underlings memorize the gory opening monologue from the movie Patton, only with the word “Demo crat” standing in for the word “Nazi.” Other young rightists of the period went a step further. J. Michael Waller, the editor of the Sequent, a student paper at George Washington University, actually took breaks from red-baiting professors in order to zip down to Central America and hang out with the Nicaraguan Contras and the death-squad faction in El Salvador.

War was the order of the day, from President Reagan’s fight with the air-traffic controllers right down to the college campus, where Abramoff became famous for his declaration: “It is not our job to seek peaceful coexistence with the Left. Our job is to remove them from power permanently.” War plus revolution, actually. Abramoff liked to describe his CRs as “the sword and shield of the Reagan Revolution,” and in 1984 the young firebrand used his moment at the rostrum of the G.O.P. convention in Dallas to lecture the assembled small-business types on revolutionary theory.

Whether the small-business types grasped it or not, a revolution was indeed under way. Conservative politicians had long served business interests, and so businesspeople had long tended to be conservatives, but now would come a new turn: conservatism as business, conservatism as a source of profit for the people Jack Abramoff once referred to as “political entrepreneurs.”

In its embryonic form, conservatism-as-industry consisted mainly in peddling right-wing grievances to the like-minded. In those days there were dealers in precious metals who used a towering contempt for liberalism as a sales pitch for gold coins. There were outfits raising money to help beleaguered conservative politicians who were in fact not beleaguered and had not asked for the help. There were anti-union charities and even fake anti-union charities, all of them capitalizing on the keen hatred for labor shared by so many businessmen. “There was so much money ready for conservative organizations in the United States,” said Spitz Channell, a freelance conservative fund-raiser later involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, that the problem was finding “ways to spend that money.”

Abramoff quickly established himself as an entrepreneur with promise. When the “campus radical” took over as the CRs’ chairman in 1981, the group’s budget came directly from the Republican National Committee. That had been sufficient for the old CRs, who liked to party and aimed to anger nobody. But Abramoff started to complain about the arrangement in his first year. And he schemed to achieve autonomy. He didn’t want “to be the youth arm of the Republican National Committee,” his onetime lieutenant David Miner remembers. He wanted

a very strong, viable organization. And instead of once a year sitting down with the budget director and the political director of the RNC and making a twenty-minute case about why they should donate $100,000 a year to the College Republicans, Jack decided he was going to run the College Republicans just like the Republican National Committee was run: he was going to have his own direct mail list, he was going to have prominent members of Congress sign letters for him, and he was going to raise his own money. That’s a pretty bold statement for someone to do at twenty-two years old.

It was so bold, in fact, that it infuriated the RNC officials charged with supervising the college auxiliary. They kicked the CRs out of their building.

No matter. Under Abramoff’s leadership, enthusiasm was high, membership soared, and revenues quintupled; what’s more, fully 70 percent of that income came from individual donors, dwarfing contributions from the RNC itself. “Jack was a very creative, smart executive,” Miner told me. He was “a hell of a CEO.”Before Abramoff’s name became so poisonous, most College Republicans regarded this era as their finest hour. In 2001, then-chairman Scott Stewart introduced the lobbyist to the CRs’ convention as “probably the best national chairman we’ve ever had.”

As entrepreneurs are supposed to do, Abramoff and Norquist opened themselves to the market, setting up incentives for growth and looking for investors outside the parent organization. And what did the College Republicans have to offer these investors, these donors? Outrage. Activism. The right-wing position rammed home with force. To see college kids in the street, chanting the slogans of the hard right—this was a spectacle for which older Republicans, angered by what they had seen in the Sixties, were willing to pay a great price. And Abramoff’s CRs delivered, with constant protests in Washington and a series of insulting posters, the most famous of which slyly implied that liberals were communist dupes.

I have managed to unearth a single specimen of direct mail from the CRs’ Abramoff period, and it is typical of the genre circa 1983: by turns chummy, frightening, confiding, and apocalyptic. As was common in those days, the letter is signed by an elected official—in this case by New York Representative Jack Kemp, then the best-known conservative in Congress. (Today Kemp advises John McCain on economic policy.) It pleads with the recipient to “dig down deep” for the College Republicans, led by “my good friend Jack Abramoff.” And why should Mr. and Mrs. America give to Jack Abramoff’s CRs, of all groups? Because, according to Kemp, they are “the most important Republican organization in America today,” prepared to do all manner of grassroots electioneering in the upcoming 1984 contest. And why should the reader care about that? Because “our nation is in grave danger of sliding into another depression” should liberals be permitted to resume their tax-and-spend ways. “That’s right,” Kemp warned. “A depression worse than the so-called Great Depression.” Thankfully, though, Jack Abramoff and his “dedicated group of young leaders . . . understand what must be done to return economic prosperity to America.”[actually RR runs up huge deficit, that BC prosperity fixes]

The larger mechanism CEO Abramoff used to break free from his stodgy, moderate Republican elders was a tax-exempt fund-raising group called the United Students of America Foundation (a.k.a. the USA Foundation, or sometimes just USAF), which was technically nonpartisan but in reality simply added its voice to whatever cause the CRs happened to be pushing. While direct mail solicited funds from individual conservatives, the USA Foundation allowed Abramoff and his crew to go after hefty contributions from the real powers of American conservatism: corporations. And with the support of corporate money came, wouldn’t you know it, support for corporate-friendly causes in the world at large.

Going freelance, as Abramoff did with the USA Foundation, soon became a popular career move among the sons of Reagan. Ralph Reed launched a group called Students for America, a Southern outfit designed to bring evangelicals into the conservative mix. Students for a Better America, which warred on liberal professors, was set up by Steve Baldwin, also a onetime Abramoff lieutenant. The Conservative Youth Federation of America was launched by Amy Moritz, yet another Abramoff associate. And let us not forget the Conservative Action Foundation, the Conservative Student Support Foundation, and the mysterious Young Conservative Foundation, “America’s premier Human Rights organization.”

It was through the USA Foundation that Abramoff seems to have discovered the profitable side of politics. The occasion for this discovery was the College Republicans’ ongoing war with Ralph Nader’s Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), student-activist outfits that were set up in the Seventies and funded at most colleges by “activity fees” that all students were required to pay unless they checked a box on a form. This was the point on which the CRs challenged them, insisting on campus after campus that it was “sinful and tyrannical” to compel students to fund an obviously political organization.

Like other Nader groups, the student PIRGs were something of a nuisance for business, and at some point it apparently occurred to Abramoff or Norquist that defunding and thus “killing” campus PIRG chapters was a service for which the targeted businesses ought to be paying. So the young entrepreneurs of the USA Foundation got out there and sold themselves as political hit men. According to one 1986 study, by the journalist Allan Nairn, the group managed to collect tribute from canning and bottling companies, two oil companies, an electric company (PIRGs were then working to set up utility watchdog groups), Amway, Coors, an assortment of San Francisco landlords worried about the possibility of rent control, and the Campbell Soup Company, which paid the USA Foundation to undermine a campus support group for a migrant farmworkers’ union. It was pugnacity for pay.

The USA Foundation’s motto was “Promoting a free market of ideas on the nation’s campuses,” and here we encounter yet another of the Washington right’s signature lines. Like so many conservative ideas—anticommunism, for example—it sounds fine at first. A “free market of ideas” sounds like “free inquiry” or a “free exchange of ideas,” an environment in which hypotheses are tested and bad ones are weeded out while good ones go on to earn the respect of the community of scholars. But this is not what the phrase means at all. Markets do not determine the objective merit of things, only their price, which is to say, their merit in the eyes of large corporations and the very wealthy.

The point, and the profit, was in getting the people with money to understand which ideas served their common interests, which ones didn’t, and then to act together as a class—supporting the good ideas and crushing the liberal ones. This was a plan with legs: When I spoke to Grover Norquist in 2006, he was still insisting that businesses had to be instructed on big-picture thinking, on the amazing returns to be realized through funding conservatism. By then, of course, Grover Norquist was no longer some campus activist; he was the architect of the most effective defund-the-left program Washington has ever seen. And his old friend Jack Abramoff was on his way to jail.

Side by side with the Entrepreneur in those days stood another great conservative hero: the Freedom Fighter, a ragged warrior who had, according to myth, spontaneously taken up arms against communism in Third World countries around the globe. American conservatives came to love these freedom fighters intensely, and for a simple reason. These tough anticommunists in faraway lands validated the conservatives’ most cherished fantasies of the Sixties turned right-side up. The freedom fighters proved it: Reagan’s revolution was for real.

Traditional conservatives had generally regarded anticommunist guerrilla movements as necessary evils, doing important if ugly work. The transforming fire of Reaganism, however, turned all such cutthroats and mercenaries into patriots. It was our guys who were the heroic underdogs now, disrespected and ill-supplied, going up against the high-tech, organization-men monsters of the Soviet Union—and, of course, its liberal proxies here in the United States.

The peerless darling of the freedom-fighter fan club was Jonas Savimbi, the charismatic Angolan guerrilla leader whose every utterance seemed to strike young Eighties conservatives as a timeless profundity. Angola had been one of the very last countries in Africa to be freed from colonial domination, but, unlike seemingly every other “national liberator” in the preceding decades, Savimbi was not a communist. In Angola, the communists were the ones who grabbed power in the capital as soon as the Europeans left; Savimbi, who fought them with the backing of the apartheid government in South Africa, supposedly believed in free enterprise and balanced budgets.

Conservatives were smitten with this self-titled general who struggled for free markets in his remote land. They fell for Savimbi as romantically, and as guilelessly, as Sixties radicals once did for Che, Ho, and Huey. Savimbi was “one of the few authentic heroes of our time,” roared Jeane Kirkpatrick, queen of the neocons, when she introduced him at the 1986 Conservative Political Action Conference. Grover Norquist followed the great man around his camp in Angola, preparing magazine articles for Savimbi’s signature. Jack Abramoff made a movie about Savimbi, depicting him as a tougher, African version of Gandhi. Even Savimbi’s capital—the remote camp called “Jamba”—was described in conservative literature with elevated language such as “Savimbi’s Kingdom.”

In truth, Savimbi’s main achievement was to keep going, for nearly thirty years, a civil war that made Angola one of the worst places on earth—its population impoverished, its railroads and highways and dams in ruins, its countryside strewn with land mines by the millions, even its elephant herds wiped out, their tusks hacked off to raise funds for his army.

This was the man the rebel right chose for the starring role in one of the strangest spectacles in American political history, a media event designed to cement conservatism’s identification with revolution. The organizer was Jack Abramoff; the place was Jamba; the model, I am told, was Woodstock—only a right-wing version, with guerrillas instead of rock bands. Every kind of freedom fighter was there, joining hands in territory liberated by arms from a Soviet client regime. There were Nicaraguan Contras, some Afghan mujahedeen, an American tycoon—and they all got together at Savimbi’s hideout.

This “rumble in the jungle,” as skeptics called it, came to pass in June of 1985. Of course, bringing it off required considerable assistance from Savimbi’s South African patrons. Nobody else even knew how to find Jamba.

Since these freedom fighters had no actual issues to discuss—no trade agreements or mutual-defense plans or anything—they signed theJamba Declaration, a bit of high-flown folderol written by Grover Norquist that aimed for solemnity but sounded more like the work of a fifth-grader who has been forced to memorize the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence and has got them all jumbled up somehow.

Jamba was meant as a celebration of freedom, a word revered by Americans generally and a term of enormous significance to conservatives in particular. Yet as freedom’s embodiment Abramoff had chosen a terrorist: Jonas Savimbi, the leader of an armed cult. To fill the main supporting role in this great freedom-fest, meanwhile, the organizers turned to apartheid South Africa, a place where only a small, correctly complexioned percentage of the population possessed even the most basic democratic rights.

And here we encounter one of the right’s great lost causes. You don’t have to dig very deep into the conservative literature of the Eighties before you hit apartheid South Africa. Today the issue makes conservatives uncomfortable, naturally, and few of them will own up to the passion with which they once worked to rationalize that government or to vilify its foes. But in those days, South Africa’s agonizing racial problems, its prosperous but beleaguered business community, and its stout defiance of all things communist made it a potent symbol for American conservatives: South Africa was essentially like us, and yet the liberals, with their sanctions and divestment strategies, with their airy do-gooder moralism, were prepared to sell out this loyal friend, just as they had sold out so many others.

As it happened, Jack Abramoff had visited South Africa in 1983 to meet with student leaders, presumably including Russel Crystal,who headed an energetic right-wing outfit on that nation’s campuses. Crystal was a sort of South African doppelgänger to Abramoff, echoing not only the American’s tactical thinking but his combative style as well. In the early Eighties, Crystal’s group declared “all-out war” on its campus adversaries, who, he said, were “undermining the will of the Western world”; on one occasion his followers reportedly threatened a peaceful left-wing demonstration with baseball bats. Just like the College Republicans, Crystal’s student organization spent heavily, and Crystal boasted about its financial “support from the business community.”

One month after Jamba, Crystal’s student group hosted a second right-wing Woodstock, bringing together conservative college students from around the world. The event was called “Youth for Freedom,” and a “Dear Delegate” letter given to each participant explained its purpose: It was 1985, the U.N.’s “International Youth Year,” and high-minded youth congresses were happening all over the world—most of them “under the leadership of . . . communist front organisations . . . to propagate their own marxist/leninist agenda.” The duty of the righteous was obvious: “to gather the true defenders of liberty and freedom”; to ponder “the security and prosperity of the free world”; and to draft a statement to which “conservative students worldwide” might rally. Norquist, Abramoff...,Although Abramoff is listed as the very last speaker on the official “Youth for Freedom” program, none of the attendees I talked to remember seeing him there. and a gaggle of College Republicans made up the American contingent. Color was added by a representative of the German extreme right. (Bonus points: he had been a U-boat captain during World War II.) The delegates listened to a denunciation of divestment. They received an expensively printed booklet about the martial and philosophical achievements of Jonas Savimbi. After the conference, the kids were given a treat: some of the “youth for freedom” got to go to a military base to see a riot-control demonstration.

Coverage of the conclave in the South African press focused on the lavishness of the proceedings and the great expense involved in flying everyone to Johannesburg. The participants stayed in the finest hotel in the city, and the conference provided a squad of interpreters and a video crew to document it all. Obviously, Russel Crystal’s tiny student group couldn’t have paid for all of this by itself, and Crystal himself kept mum about the financing. But other freedom-youths confirmed that the gathering had been at least partly funded by South African corporate concerns, in the now-familiar political-entrepreneur pattern: “The business community in South Africa is very enthused about any face-lift possibility that they can gain,” one of the organizers told Allan Nairn.

Out of the Youth for Freedom conference came an organization called Liberty and Democracy International, which didn’t last long, perhaps because of the neck-snapping contradiction between its dreamy title and its South African reality. Out of that organization, in 1986, came theInternational Freedom Foundation—the IFF—the strangest scheme hatched to that point by the sons of Reagan for bringing the power of money to bear on politics and the world of ideas.

Not one of the many former IFFers I contacted, either in the United States or in South Africa, would consent to an interview, but we do know the most basic facts about the group. According to the official report of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the duties of the IFF included supporting Jonas Savimbi and fighting trade sanctions against South Africa. The IFF’s head office was in Washington, where Abramoff served as executive director. But the shots were called by the organization’s South African branch, headed by Russel Crystal. There was an office in London and, eventually, one in West Germany. We also know that the IFF was an expensive proposition and that the apartheid government spent millions of dollars propping it up. The group hosted speakers, conferences, and presentations; it published several magazines and a flock of newsletters; its principals constantly traveled the globe, spreading their toxic trinity of “Liberty, Security, Prosperity.”

The Washington branch of the IFF, it seems, was particularly successful at courting politicians. The group’s “advisory board” listed, among others, Senator Jesse Helms and Representatives Phil Crane, “B-1 Bob” Dornan, James Inhofe (a stout family-values supporter), and “Buz” Lukens (an egregious family-values violator). The group also tried their hand at influence-buying. In 1987, the IFF’s Washington office requested $450,000 from South Africa in order to buy a jet plane for the presidential campaign of Jack Kemp, then the idol of the conservative movement. According to internal IFF documents, this bauble would be an investment sufficient to make Abramoff’s gang “the ‘kitchen cabinet’ types of the Kemp administration.” The South Africans turned the proposal down, realizing even then what a long shot Kemp was.

The IFF made no direct attempt to justify apartheid, for the simple reason that racism as a philosophy of government was flatly irredeemable in the West. Instead the IFF aimed to tarnish apartheid’s enemies, “to paint the ANC as a project of the international department of the Soviet Communist Party.” This was merely a large-scale replay of the political entrepreneurship we saw at the USA Foundation, with Jack and the gang yet again hiring themselves out to a wealthy client to perform a hit on a troublesome left-wing group. High points in this campaign included hearings by the House Republican Study Committee in 1987 to blame “the plight of the children of South Africa” on the commie-terrorist ANC; reports playing up the ANC’s commie-derived taste for atrocities against kids; newspaper ads designed to throw cold water on Nelson Mandela during his triumphant visit to America in 1990; and an endless war on Ted Kennedy, a leading proponent of the 1986 sanctions against South Africa.[mandela on terror watch list till----?]

The real, confessed éminence grise behind the IFF was South Africa’s infamous “superspy” Craig Williamson, a man whose bloody escapades deserve an entire volume in the annals of Cold War espionage. Williamson infiltrated South Africa’s main leftist student group in the Seventies and rose to its leadership; he used the connections thus made to assist in the imprisonment and murder of the movement’s other leaders. A respected South African historian, asked for his opinion of the man, said simply, “Craig Williamson was the scum of the twentieth century. He murdered friends of mine. I spit on the ground he walks on.”

When the IFF’s true identity was exposed in 1995, the Americans questioned by the media denied any knowledge of its ugly provenance. In most cases this was plausible enough; after all, the basic principle of a clandestine operation is secrecy. But Jack Abramoff almost certainly knew. Still, he denied it—“categorically,” he exclaimed—when the truth came out. Plus, he had an explanation for all the bad press: “It’s pay-back time in South Africa.”

The single biggest scandal of the Eighties resulted from a confluence of the two great conservative themes I have been describing: the “freedom fighter” mentality and the cult of political entrepreneurship.

The outlines of the Iran-Contra story are well known. President Reagan’s CIA was waging a “secret” war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua; the Democratic Congress understandably objected, as we were technically at peace with that nation, and, in 1983, cut off funds to the CIA-backed Contras. Over at the National Security Council, however, Marine Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North came up with a scheme to get money to the Contras anyway, using a network of private donors, weapons sales to Iran, and private supply operations. He also organized behind-the-scenes efforts to lobby Congress to change its mind.

Quite early on in the annals of Iran-Contra our pioneering political entrepreneurs make their inevitable appearance. Jack Abramoff crops up in North’s notebook for February 14, 1985, his name misspelled but the beginnings of a great lobbyist unmistakable. On March 26, Abramoff showed up on a list of people helping North to influence the upcoming Contra-aid vote in Congress. Later that day, Abramoff phoned North and told him that a number of “votes” were available in exchange for some or other favor.

We do not ordinarily remember Iran-Contra for the business opportunities it generated, but in the long, winding history of conservatism-as-industry it remains a particularly instructive chapter. The aforementioned political entrepreneur Spitz Channell, for example, sensed the Contras’ potential early on and used them to become the most successful fund-raiser in all of Washington, circa 1985. Channell’s marks were conservative widows; he made his pitches in person, often using a scary slide show put together by Oliver North about the dangers of Nicaraguan communism. Not only did his donors reap tax write-offs by giving to one of the “nonprofit” groups Channell had set up but they sometimes got to meet President Reagan too, a favor the fund-raiser arranged simply by throwing some change to one of the president’s former aides.

==

Meet Mr. Republican: Jack Abramoff

By Matt Taibbi

Rolling Stone

24 March Issue

The secret history of the most corrupt man in Washington.

</blockquote>

So this is it, finally. By the time this magazine hits the newsstands, Jack Abramoff - right-wing megalobbyist and great feckless shitwad of our new American century - will be but a tick of the geological clock away from The End. There will be no rack, no stoning, no scorpion-filled sand pit, no bucket of fire ants. Just a sanitary plea agreement and a single blow of the gavel, and "Casino Jack" Abramoff will disappear for a few years of weightlifting and Talmudic study.

En route to his day of reckoning, Abramoff really did travel each and every right-wing highway, from Jo-burg in the old days to the Bush White House. But he's being sentenced for only the last few miles of that trip. It's almost an insult to a criminal of Abramoff's caliber that the charge he'll go to jail for is a low-rent wire-fraud scheme committed in a pickpocket capital like Miami Beach. In that one, Jack and his cronies claimed to have $23 million in assets when he didn't have a dime, and he persuaded financial backers to purchase a $147.5 million cruise-ship casino empire.[stone?] A nice score for a Gotti child, maybe, but a bit gauche for the wizard of the Republican fast lane.

The other charges are a little more respectable. He took tens of millions from Indian tribes that sought relief from Washington on gaming-industry questions, illegally pocketed millions in lobbying fees and evaded taxes on his ill-gotten gains. He also used their money to provide, in exchange for favors, a "stream of things of value" to elected officials, including golf junkets to Scotland[meet thatcher, paid by ridenour?], free meals and other swag.

It's that last bit that made Abramoff a national celebrity, the poster boy for the way the Bush administration does business and the most feared name around in a Washington political society that is still waiting with bated lizard breath for the other shoe to drop. To most Americans, Jack Abramoff is the bloodsucking bogeyman with a wad of bills in his teeth who came through the window in the middle of the night and stole their voice in government. But he was much more than that. Abramoff was as much of a symbol of his generation's Republican Party as Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater was of his.

He was an amazingly ubiquitous figure, a sort of Zelig of the political right - you could find him somewhere, in the foreground or the background, in almost every Republican political scandal of the past twenty-five years. He carried water for the racist government of Pretoria during the apartheid days and whispered in the ear of those Republican congressmen who infamously voted against anti-apartheid resolutions. He organized rallies in support of the Grenada invasion, showed up in Ollie North's offices during Iran-Contra, palled around with Mobutu Sese Seko, Jonas Savimbi and the Afghan mujahedin.

All along, Abramoff was buying journalists, creating tax-exempt organizations to fund campaign activities and using charities to fund foreign conflicts. He spent the past twenty years doing business with everyone from James Dobson to the Gambino family, from Ralph Reed to Grover Norquist to Karl Rove to White House procurements chief David Safavian. He is even lurking in the background of the 2004 Ohio voting-irregularities scandal, having worked with the Diebold voting-machine company to defeat requirements for a paper trail in elections.

He is a living museum of corruption, and in a way it is altogether too bad that he is about to disappear from public scrutiny. In a hilariously tardy attempt to attend to his moral self-image, lately he has been repackaging himself as a fallen prophet, a humbled super-Jew who was guilty only of going too far to serve God. He was the "softest touch in town," he has said, a sucker for causes who "incorrectly didn't follow the mitzvah of giving away at most twenty percent." Then he shows up a few weeks before sentencing with his cock wedged in the mouth of an adoring Vanity Fair reporter, claiming with a straight face that his problems came from trying to "save the world."

There is no evidence yet that anyone is going to call him on any of this bullshit, and we can see where all of this is going. He'll go away now for his Martha Stewart fitness tour, and a few years from now he'll slide straight into his own prime-time family show for cable's inevitable Orthodox Channel and a $14 million deal from HarperCollins for his 290-page illustrated manual of marriage and intimacy for devout Jewish couples.

No other outcome is really possible, given the logic of the American celebrity world. What is unknown, as yet, is whether America will learn any lessons from the here-and-now of the Jack Abramoff story. For that to happen, we would all have to take a good, hard look at the remarkable life story he is now temporarily leaving us to consider.

Abramoff is a man defined by his connections. As an individual - as a lone dot on a schematic diagram, an intersection of crossed strands in a web - Jack Abramoff is a nobody, just another pompous Washington greedhead distinguished only by the world's silliest Boris Badenov fedora ("That was between me and God," Abramoff now says of the infamous hat). But let him loose in society, and magic happens. Jack Abramoff's instinctive political talent was for first locating and then inveigling himself into the disreputable backroom deal of the hour. He was a walking cut corner, a thumb on the scale of American history.

The story about Jack Abramoff and the elementary school election, the one first reported by The Los Angeles Times, is true. It only seems like apocryphal bullshit. Born in Atlantic City to Frank Abramoff, an affluent Diner's Club executive who would go on to represent golfer Arnold Palmer, Jack moved with his family to Beverly Hills as a boy and grew up attending one of the more prestigious elementary schools in the country, the Hawthorne School. And it was here, at this same fancy-pants school that would one day be home to a chubby girl named Monica Lewinsky, that Jack got his start in politics by being disqualified from a race for student-body president for cheating.

"Jack was a very, very, very smart boy with a straight-A average," recalls Milton Rowen, the then-principal of the school. "We had certain rules about the amount of money that could be spent, and there was no electioneering outside of the school . . . He had his mother come up with hot dogs in her car and give them out to the kids.

"He was a very nice boy," the eighty-seven-year-old now says, laughing. "But he hot-dogged it."

Still, even with that setback, Abramoff was already off and running on a course that would lead him straight to the political underworld. Like Watergate vets Donald Segretti, Dwight Chapin, Gordon Strachan and Ron Ziegler before him, Abramoff throughout his youth would be drawn to student politics, running (and losing) again for student-body president at Beverly Hills High before becoming head of the Massachusetts College Republicans while at Brandeis University in the Boston suburb of Waltham.

Abramoff was part of the first wave of young people who came back to the Republican Party en masse during the so-called Reagan Revolution. The year 1980 was a time of resurgence for a party that just four years before had been in a post-Watergate death spiral; the Moral Majority had just been founded, and new-right prophets like Howard Phillips, Paul Weyrich and Richard Viguerie were attracting a fresh generation of young people to the brash, piss-in-your-face, fuck-the-poor ideas emanating from places like the Heritage Foundation and Bill Buckley's Young Americans for Freedom. Among their other converts at this time were Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, a pair of ambitious students from Harvard and Emory University, respectively.

After Reagan's 1980 landslide win, those two, along with Abramoff, would work together at the College Republicans National Committee, and when Abramoff succeeded Norquist as CRNC chief he would win a national reputation as a hard-liner with his Lenin-esque pronouncement that it wasn't the job of young Republicans to "seek peaceful co-existence with the left." The take-no-prisoners stance of the twentysomething student leader: "Our job is to remove them from power permanently."

All accounts point to Abramoff as the prototypically humorless Animal House campus villain. A thick-necked champion weight lifter (he still holds the Beverly Hills High bench-press record) with a square jaw and exquisite hygiene, the man-child Abramoff also had the kind of sadistic jock temperament that impresses coaches and corporate recruiters alike. "The football coach was always afraid that Jack was going to kill somebody if he hit him head-on," Rowen says. By the time he went away to Brandeis, he'd already undergone a conversion to Orthodox Judaism, having found religion at the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles (after seeing Fiddler on the Roof as a youngster, Abramoff says), and so he arrived in 1970s Massachusetts the rarest of East Coast campus creatures: a moralizing weight lifter with short hair and a passion for Republican politics.

The Abramoff story, in fact, confirms in the most dramatic way every vicious popular stereotype about campus conservatives. Kids who get involved with lefty politics on campus almost always graduate straight into some degrading state of semi-employment - the defining characteristic of lefty student movements is how few doors they open for you. Another defining characteristic of the student left is its persistent, unquenchable and irrational suspicion that the campus Republicans hold their meetings in the offices of someplace like the Rand Corporation, where they have their buttocks branded with Sumerian symbols in secret ceremonies that upon graduation will gain all of them entrance to the upper ranks of corporate and governmental privilege.

That was Jack Abramoff. Like those famed USC student "ratfuckers" who went on to hold the ultimate panty raid in the Watergate Hotel, Abramoff and his close friends Norquist and Ralph Reed (the one-time head of the Georgia College Republicans used to sleep on Abramoff's couch) never really abandoned the laughable training-wheel secrecy and capture-the-flag gamesmanship of student politics. His buttocks freshly branded, Abramoff in 1983 traveled to Johannesburg on behalf of the CRNC and immediately parlayed his student experience into a real job as a sort of frontman for South African intelligence services. He was the young progressive's paranoid nightmare come shockingly true: absurd campus Republican proto-geek effortlessly transformed at graduation into flesh-and-blood neo-Nazi spook.

It is not easy to find anyone who actually encountered Abramoff during his South Africa experiences, although one source who was involved with South African right-wing student politics recalled "Casino Jack" as a "blue-eyed boy" who rubbed people the wrong way with his arrogant demeanor. On his first trip to Johannesburg in 1983, Abramoff met with leaders from the archconservative, pro-apartheid National Students Federation, which itself is alleged to have been created by South Africa's notorious Bureau of Security Services. Together with NSF member Russel Crystal - today a prominent South African politician in the Democratic Alliance, an anti-African National Congress party - Abramoff subsequently, in 1986, chaired the head of a conservative think tank called the International Freedom Foundation.

The creation of the IFF officially marked the beginning of the silly phase of Abramoff's career. According to testimony before Democratic South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1995, the IFF was not a conservative think tank but actually a front for the South African army. Testimony in sealed TRC hearings reportedly reveal that the IFF was known by the nickname "Pacman" in the South African army and that its activities were part of a larger plan called "Operation Babushka," designed to use propaganda to discredit the ANC and Nelson Mandela at home and abroad. Among other things, Abramoff managed during this time to funnel funds and support from the IFF to a variety of stalwart congressmen and senators, including Rep. Dan Burton and Sen. Jesse Helms, all of whom consistently opposed congressional resolutions against apartheid. These members of Congress would deny knowing that the IFF's money came from the South African government, because that, of course, would have been illegal; Abramoff himself denied it too, although he has been largely quiet on the subject since the TRC testimony in 1995.

In a hilarious convergence of ordinary workaday incompetence and pointlessly secretive cloak-and-dagger horseshit, Operation Babushka's grand opus would ultimately turn out to be the production of the 1989 Dolph Lundgren vehicle Red Scorpion, in which American moviegoers were invited to care about an anti-communist revolutionary targeted for execution by a sweat-drenched jungle version of Lundgren's overacting Ivan Drago persona. The film, which Abramoff wrote and produced, was instantly derided by critics around the world as one of the stupidest movies ever made.

Veteran character actor Carmen Argenziano, who played the heavy, Col. Zayas, in Red Scorpion, recalls the "Cimino-esque" film shoot in Namibia as one of the most surreal experiences of his career. "It was pretty weird," he says. "What was going on was fishy, and then in the middle of production the word spread that there was some kind of weird South African/CIA connection. And that bummed everyone out."

Argenziano, whom history will likely absolve for being, with Lundgren, one half of the film's only memorable scene, which also perhaps represents the apex of Jack Abramoff's literary career (Argenziano: "Are you out of your mind?" Lundgren: "No. Just out of bullets"), laughs almost nonstop as he recalls his Namibia experiences.

"We were all staying in this hotel called the Kalahari Sands in Windhoek, the capital," he says. "There was this huge new escalator in the hotel. I guess it was the only one in the country, because little African kids kept coming in to stare at it. But the South Africans we had on the shoot [Abramoff was reportedly provided free labor by the South African army] kept shooing them away, literally pushing kids off the escalator, shouting these racist words at them. Wasn't exactly good for morale."

The Eighties show Abramoff involved in a series of almost comic backroom escapades, the most famous being the organization of a sort of trade convention for anti-communist rebel leaders in Jamba, Angola. There are not many facts on the record about this incident, but what is known smacks of an articulate young Darth Vader putting out scones and lemonade at a sand-planet meeting of the leading bounty-hunter scum in the universe. Under the auspices of the Citizens for America, a group founded by Rite Aid drugstore magnate and one-time New York gubernatorial candidate Lewis Lehrman at the request of Ronald Reagan, Abramoff helped organize a meeting of anti-communist rebels that included Angolan UNITA fighters, Afghan mujahedin, Laotian guerrillas and Nicaraguan Contras.

Some reports speculate that the meeting was convened so that one of the Americans - perhaps Abramoff or Lehrman - could pass along a message of support from the White House. But it's more likely that this will be just another Abramoff episode to remain shrouded in mystery. Twenty-one years later, Lehrman won't say what it was all about, noting that "I do not recall if there was a White House message discussion" and adding only that "there were very many anti-communist individuals present in Jamba."

Abramoff's CFA experience was extensive enough, however, to make him a character in the Iran-Contra scandal. His ostensible role was to raise support for the Contras through the CFA. "Abramoff was a bit player in Iran-Contra," says Jack Blum, a Washington lawyer who served as a special counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the Iran-Contra investigation. "That's where he learned that the money wasn't in the ideological skulduggery world. It was in the go-buy-the-government world." But, Blum adds, Abramoff's experiences with various conservative foundations and nonprofits during this period proved valuable later on. "This is when he made all his connections," he says. "It was through them that he learned that it was much more lucrative to work in the commercial end of politics."

Abramoff, Norquist and Reed were all in their mid-to-late twenties, and all were experiencing paradigmatic life changes. While Abramoff was joining such groups as the Council for National Policy, the CFA and the United States of America Foundation, Norquist was founding Americans for Tax Reform, the organization he would later ride to prominence as a fat, hygienically deficient tax-policy oracle. Reed, meanwhile, was recovering from the trauma of an April 1983 incident in which he was reportedly caught plagiarizing for his student newspaper a Commentary article denouncing Mohandas Gandhi. A few months after that setback, however, Reed found Jesus in a phone booth outside the Bullfeathers pub in Washington - and by 1985 he, too, had found his calling, terrorizing abortion clinics with the Students for America, a sort of pale precursor to the Christian Coalition.

There is a common thread running through almost all of Abramoff's activities during this tadpole period of his in the Eighties. Suggested in his every action is an utter contempt for legal governmental processes; he behaves as if ordinary regulations are for suckers and the uncommitted. If the government won't step up to the plate and sign off on support for the Contras, you go through channels and do it yourself. If you really want to win an election, you find ways around finance laws and spending limits. And if you want to oppose a national anti-apartheid movement on the country's campuses, don't waste time building from the ground up; go straight to Pretoria and bring home a few million dollars in a bag.

One of the ugliest developments in American culture since Abramoff's obscure Cold Warrior days in the Eighties has been the raging but highly temporary success of various "smart guys" who upon closer examination aren't all that smart. There was BALCO steroid scum Victor Conte ("The smartest son of a bitch I ever met in my life," said one Olympian client), Enron's "smartest guys in the room" Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay, and, finally, "ingenious dealmaker" Jack Abramoff. Somewhere along the line, in the years since the Cold War, Americans as a whole became such craven, bum-licking, self-absorbed fat cats that they were willing to listen to these fifth-rate prophets who pretended that the idea that rules could be broken was some kind of earth-shattering revelation - as though they had fucking invented fraud and cheating. But to a man, they all turned out to be dumb, incompetent fuckups, destined to bring us all down with them - not even good at being criminals.

All of Abramoff's late-career capers - the inner-city youth charity that actually bought sniper scopes for Israeli settlers, the academic think tank that turned out to be a lifeguard in a shack on Rehoboth Beach, the "check's in the mail" fleecing of his own tailor out of a bill for suits - they all exude the same infuriating "Check out the brains on us!" vibe.

Take the infamous Naftasib scheme of 1997-98. The short version of this story is that Abramoff and Tom DeLay met with a bunch of shady Russian oil executives in 1997; the Russians then sent $1 million to a British law firm called James and Sarch; James and Sarch then sent a million to the pompously named nonprofit "U.S. Family Network," which in turn sent money to numerous destinations. It went to a lobbyist agency called the Alexander Strategy Group that was run by DeLay's ex-chief of staff, Edwin Buckham; the agency would subsequently hire DeLay's wife at a salary of $3,200 a month. It went toward the purchase of a luxury D.C. town house that DeLay would use to raise money. And it went toward the purchase of a luxury box at FedExField, which Abramoff used to watch the Redskins. If you follow the loop all the way around, the quid pro quo probably involved DeLay's 1998 decision to support an IMF loan to Russia, whose economy collapsed that year and would rely on an IMF bailout to survive. A Maryland pastor named Christopher Geeslin, who briefly served as the U.S. Family Network's president, would later say that Buckham told him that the $1 million from the Russians was intended to influence DeLay's decision regarding funding for the IMF. DeLay ended up voting to replenish IMF funds in September of that year, right at the time of the bailout.

Is this smart? Sure, if you're fucking ten years old. If your idea of smart is turning an IMF loan into Redskins tickets, then, yeah, this is smart. But another way to look at it is that these assholes got themselves Redskins tickets by giving $18 billion to one of the most corrupt governments on Earth. I'd call that buying at a premium.

That's the most striking characteristic of Abramoff and his crew of ex-student leaders; nearly thirty years out of college, no longer young at all, the whole bunch of them are still Dean Wormer's sneaky little shits, high-fiving one another for executing the brilliant theft and pre-dawn public hanging of the rival college's stuffed-bear mascot. That whole adolescent vibe permeates the confiscated Abramoff e-mails, the best example of which being this exchange between Jack and his "evil elf" aide Michael Scanlon regarding their lobbying fees for the Coushatta Indian tribe:

Scanlon: Coushatta is an absolute cake walk. Your cut on the project as proposed is at least 800k.

Abramoff: How can I say this strongly enough: YOU IZ DA MAN

Again, these assholes affirm every stereotype about campus conservatives. They don't spend enough time being kids when they're supposed to, so they do it when they're balding, middle-aged men with handles and back hair - using Washington and Congress as their own personal sandbox.

They figured out how to beat everything. Everything about the Abramoff story suggests that at some point, he and his buddies Norquist, Reed and DeLay took a long, hard look at the American system, war-gamed it and came up with a master plan to strike hard at its weakest points. In the end, almost all of the Abramoff scams revolved around the vulnerability of the national legislature to outside manipulation. Once Abramoff and his cabal figured out how to beat Congress, everything else fell into place.

Case in point: Abramoff's remarkable success in defeating H.R. 521, a 2001 House bill that would place the Guam Superior Court under the control of a federally controlled Supreme Court. Led by Judge Alberto Lamorena, Guam Superior Court justices hired the lobbyist to defeat the bill, which would have unseated them as the chief judicial authorities of the island. It says something for Abramoff's ability to bring out the worst in people that he managed to get a group of sitting judges to pay him $324,000 in public funds in $9,000 installments so as to avoid detection.

Despite the $324,000 fee, Abramoff could not prevent the House Resources committee from unanimously recommending H.R. 521 for passage. Would the superlobbyist finally fail? No, of course not. Given what we know about Abramoff's tactics, we'd be naive not to conclude that he could lean on DeLay and then-Whip Roy Blunt to stall the bill in the congressional machinery. On May 27th, 2002, just five days after the Resources committee made its recommendation, an Abramoff-linked PAC wrote two checks for $5,000 - one to Blunt, one to DeLay. H.R. 521 never reached the floor.

The Guam incident certainly shows how easily the whole Congress was controlled by a small gang. The DeLay Republicans, along with Abramoff, were apparently the first to recognize the opportunities for corruption presented by the House leadership's dictatorial control over key committees, in particular the Rules committee. Now, a single call to a lone Tom DeLay could decide the fate of any piece of legislation, pushing it through to a vote or gumming it up in the works as needed. The other 430-odd congressmen were window dressing.

I asked Rep. Louise Slaughter if the Guam case, which showed that just two men could quash a bill, proved that Congress was especially vulnerable to manipulation by the likes of Abramoff.

"Absolutely," she said. "And the thing is, we have no idea how many incidents like that there were. What else didn't get to the floor? We have no idea. No way of knowing."

Even more ominously, Abramoff would eventually come under fire in Guam following the mysterious removal of Guam Attorney General Frederick Black, who had seen the fate of H.R. 521 and decided to investigate Abramoff's role in it.

"The thing that really worries me about Guam is the prosecutor who was plucked off the case," says Slaughter, a New York Democrat who has spearheaded her party's lobby-reform drive. "It makes you wonder what really went on there."

At the very least, Abramoff's relationship with White House procurements officer David Safavian shows that he made at least some inroads into the world of White House patronage. Abramoff took Safavian on one of his famous Scotland golfing junkets and reportedly was receiving help from Safavian in leasing government property. Safavian was working on the distribution of millions in federal aid to Katrina-affected regions when he was arrested, which raises all kinds of questions about what else might have been going on.

"There were so many contracts, from Katrina to Iraq - God knows what really went on in there," says Slaughter.

Once Congress was conquered, Abramoff, Norquist, et al., apparently discovered a means for turning it into a pure engine for profit. The game they may have discovered worked like this: One lobbyist (Abramoff, say) represents one group of interests - for example, the Malaysian government. Then, a lobbyist friend of Abramoff's (say, Norquist) represents an antagonist to Abramoff's client, in this case, let's say dissident leader Anwar Ibrahim. Ibrahim asks Norquist to press his case against the Malaysian state in Washington; Norquist complies and uses his contacts to raise a stink on the Hill. Abramoff's client, unnerved, turns to Abramoff to make the problem go away. Abramoff dutifully goes to the same friends Norquist applied to in the first place, and the problem does indeed go away. In the end, everyone is happy and both lobbyists have performed and gotten paid. Abramoff apparently pulled this kind of double-dealing scheme more than once, as he and Ralph Reed appear to have run a similar con on the Coushatta and Tigua Indian tribes, who were on opposite sides of a gaming dispute.

An idiot might call a scheme like this clever. But that's only true if you don't consider what really happened here: Dozens of people conspiring to reduce the U.S. Congress to the level of a Belarussian rubber stamp for the sake of . . . what? A few million dollars in lobbying fees? And not even a few million dollars apiece but a few million dollars split several ways. Shit, even Paris Hilton can make a million dollars in this country without blowing up 200 years of democracy. How smart can these guys be?

Everyone sold themselves on the cheap. They apparently got Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), and many others in the House, to lie back and open their legs all the way for a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions. In the Third World, corrupt politicians at least get something for selling out the people - boats, mansions, villas in the south of France. If you offered the lowest, most drunken ex-mobster in the Russian Duma $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 in soft money for his vote, he would laugh in your face; he might even be insulted enough to shoot you. But Jack Abramoff apparently got any number of congressmen to play ball for the same kind of money.

They paid journalists to change their opinions; as it turns out, the right to free speech is worth about $2,000 a column to America's journalists like Doug Bandow of Copley News Service. And now it comes out that Diebold, the notorious voting-machine company, paid some $275,000 to Abramoff's firm, Greenberg Traurig, with the apparent aim of keeping legislation requiring paper trails in the voting process from getting into the Help America Vote Act. Conveniently, Abramoff pal Bob Ney, one of the HAVA architects, blocked every attempt to put paper trails into law, even after the controversial electoral debacles of 2000 and 2004.

They targeted Congress, the courts, the integrity of elections, and the free press, and in every corner they found willing partners who could be had for a few bucks and a package of golf tees. That doesn't mean Jack Abramoff was so very smart. No, what that says is that America is no longer trying very hard. And when Jack Abramoff hears his sentence, ours will certainly be made plain soon after. Jack Abramoff was the Patient Zero of Washington corruption. He's the girl at school that everyone got a piece of, including two janitors in their forties. It strains all credulity to think that he's been talking to the Department of Justice for months and yet prosecutors still have to "encircle" a lone congressman, Bob Ney, as has been reported. If Ney is the big target the government made a deal with Abramoff for, we'll know we've been had again.

"If you're venal and cunning enough, like him, you can do it," says Slaughter, when asked if the American system has become easy to beat. "But he had a lot of help."

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guam?  ney? delay?

sweatshops: <a href="http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/print/marianasclass_print.html">http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/print/marianasclass_print.html</a>

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backed USANext thus swift boat

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th franks wsj

Two weeks ago, the Washington Post sketched out a blueprint of the movement's leadership, naming the players and the organizations who have made the right's resurgence possible. It focused in particular on a shadowy but influential new outfit called the Conservative Action Project, which reportedly works to coordinate the movement's far-flung organizations, bloggers and publishers.

What struck me about the Post's story was the familiarity of it all. In particular, I kept being reminded of that ultimate conservative insider, the now-imprisoned superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, and the work he did on behalf of the Northern Marianas Islands, where garment factories churned out "Made in the USA" clothing under re-education camp conditions.

The object of Mr. Abramoff's lobbying, you will recall, was to protect that peculiar economic arrangement from federal meddling, a task his firm accomplished by bringing politicians, staffers and media types on trips to the tropical Marianas and urging them to understand the situation as a matter of "liberty" versus big government tyranny.

Today, as Washington conservatives scramble to stay atop the growing grass-roots right, the cast of characters is remarkably similar. For example, the "Team Abramoff" lobbyist who ran the Marianas trips program in the 1990s, Patrick Pizzella, is reported by the Post to be the "only paid staff member" of the Conservative Action Project. According to the Washington Times, Mr. Pizzella has also been "involved" in the drafting of the Mount Vernon Statement, a conservative manifesto that is meant to rally the tea-partying base.

Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) also makes an appearance in the Post story, as ATR sponsored the first round of tea parties a year ago and as Mr. Norquist's famous Wednesday morning meetings for conservative power brokers have provided a fertile medium for the movement's networking.

Just a few years ago, however, those meetings were infamous for having served as showcases for Mr. Abramoff's clients.

And then there is Dick Armey, the former House majority leader who has returned in triumph to the public stage in recent years as the chairman of the FreedomWorks pressure group and the de facto leader of the tea-party movement. Last month Mr. Armey even attended the annual meeting of the Republican National Committee to speak on the tea partiers' behalf.

As you may recall, Mr. Armey was once one of Congress's staunchest defenders of the Marianas way. Several of his aides traveled to the free-market paradise, and in 1997 Mr. Armey even wrote a letter jointly with former Rep. Tom DeLay in which he praised the islands' dedication to "the principles of free markets, enterprise, education choice, tax reform and other innovative approaches to governance."

Behold your Third Great Awakening, America. Lobbyists, sweatshops, and the junkets designed by lobbyists to make sweatshops seem like liberty are, presumably, the sort of things tea partiers should have trouble with. Will the grass-roots nation call these gentlemen to account for their freedom flimflamming of the past?

I wouldn't count on it. It is no secret, for example, that Mr. Armey was until recently something of a superlobbyist himself, ritually denouncing Washington's ways as he worked behind the scenes on behalf of multinational liquor conglomerates and international commercial real-estate concerns. His lobbying has been well-publicized since before the tea-party movement began. And yet criticism of Mr. Armey from the grass-roots right for that particular transgression remains difficult to find.

The reason we haven't heard more in this respect, I suspect, is because deep down it doesn't offend. The history of conservative idealism is, in some ways, a history of lobbying, of ever-more inventive schemes to make politics answer to money. Each of the movement's succeeding bursts of idealism have led, ineluctably, to the doors of K Street.

This one, I suspect, will be no different.

<a id="U10514154116LEC" name="U10514154116LEC" style=" line-height: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Write to </a><a class="" href="mailto:thomas@wsj.com" data-ls-seen="1" style="outline: none;">thomas@wsj.com</a>

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wiki

The monetary influence of Jack Abramoff ran deep in Washington, as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff" title="Jack Abramoff" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Jack Abramoff</a> spent millions of dollars to influence and entertain both <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_States)" title="Republican Party (United States)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Republican</a> and Democratic politicians. Abramoff had a reputation for largesse considered exceptional even by Washington standards.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">citation needed</a>] In addition to offering many Republican members of Congress expensive free meals at his restaurant, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signatures_Restaurant" title="Signatures Restaurant" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Signatures</a>, Abramoff maintained four skyboxes at major sports arenas for political entertaining at a cost of over $1 million a year. Abramoff hosted many fundraisers at these skyboxes including events for Republican politicians publicly opposed to gambling, such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Doolittle" title="John Doolittle" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">John Doolittle</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#cite_note-1" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[1]</a> Abramoff gave over $260,000 in personal contributions to Republican candidates, politicians, and organizations, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trips_funded_by_Jack_Abramoff" title="List of trips funded by Jack Abramoff" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">funded numerous trips</a> for politicians and staffers and gave none to Democrats.

From 2000 to 2006, funds and Leadership <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee" title="Political action committee" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">PACs</a> of numerous Republican candidates for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress" title="United States Congress" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Congress</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[2]</a> Under his guidance, his Indian tribe clients loosened their traditional ties to the Democratic Party, giving Republicans two-thirds of the $2.9 million they donated to federal candidates since 2001.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[3]</a> He raised $100,000 for the reelection of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush" title="George W. Bush" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">George W. Bush</a>, making him a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Pioneer" title="Bush Pioneer" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Bush Pioneer</a>. Abramoff and his wife gave $10,000 to the Bush-Cheney Recount Fund, shortly before Abramoff joined <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenberg_Traurig" title="Greenberg Traurig" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Greenberg Traurig</a>, which forgave over $314,000 in legal fees incurred by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush_presidential_campaign,_2000" title="George W. Bush presidential campaign, 2000" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Bush Campaign</a> in the 2000 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_election_recount" title="Florida election recount" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Florida election recount</a>.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[4]</a>

Of the approximately $85 million in tribal money entrusted to Abramoff, his employers, or his related organizations (see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff_Indian_lobbying_scandal" title="Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal</a> for more), over $4.4 million since 1999 were directed to at least 250 members of Congress, primarily Republicans in leadership positions or on relevant committees, and Democrats with standing connections to Native American interests (in a 2:1 GOP ratio). These contributions have since become tainted by their association with Abramoff's criminal behavior.<a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0103/p01s03-uspo.html" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaavkleqvr4xn3pgqkamqhduxfqtu7kttkpd5ra8ainfartq2irxfwt2qedafttj2fspioe1ecoleuowwjgzyab="AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB" ikegorxxhqb="IkeGOrxXhqB" ua9bfcm0lazuh="uA9Bfcm0lAZuh" yiead="YIeAD" caqsz4kcmuaaaaasuvork5cyii="); padding-right: 13px; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;" xmlns:data="data">[6]</a>

Abramoff was associated with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_DeLay" title="Tom DeLay" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Tom DeLay</a>'s and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist" title="Grover Norquist" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Grover Norquist</a>'s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Street_Project" title="K Street Project" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">K Street Project</a> to bring Republican dominance to Washington lobbying.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[5]</a>

<h2 style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border: none; display: inline; background-image: none;">Contents</h2>

</div>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#Skyboxes_and_St._Andrews" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">1 Skyboxes and St. Andrews</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#Justice_Department_investigation" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">2 Justice Department investigation</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#Politicians_who_have_received_direct_contributions_from_Abramoff" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">3 Politicians who have received direct contributions from Abramoff</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-4" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#Politicians_with_connections_to_Indian_affairs_and_Greenberg_Traurig" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">4 Politicians with connections to Indian affairs and Greenberg Traurig</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#Campaign_contributions_returned_or_donated" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">5 Campaign contributions returned or donated</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-6" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#Campaign_contributions_to_be_kept" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">6 Campaign contributions to be kept</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-7" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#Quotations" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">7 Quotations</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-9" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#References" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">9 References</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

<h2 style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Skyboxes and St. Andrews<span class="mw-editsection" style=" -webkit-user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;">[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff&action=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: Skyboxes and St. Andrews" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">edit source</a> | <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff&veaction=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: Skyboxes and St. Andrews" class="mw-editsection-visualeditor" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">edit</a>]</h2>

Through the front company Sports Suites LLC, Abramoff owned skyboxes at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MCI_Center" title="MCI Center" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">MCI Center</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camden_Yards" title="Camden Yards" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Camden Yards</a>, and two at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedEx_Field" title="FedEx Field" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">FedEx Field</a>. Between 1999 and 2003, Abramoff hosted 72 events for members of Congress, all but eight for Republicans.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#cite_note-6" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[6]</a>

On May 7, 2000, while Abramoff was actively lobbying against the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Gambling_Prohibition_Act" title="Internet Gambling Prohibition Act" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Internet Gambling Prohibition Act</a> in the House of Representatives,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_DeLay" title="Tom DeLay" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Tom DeLay</a> attended a performance by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Tenors" title="Three Tenors" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Three Tenors</a> in a skybox at Washington's MCI Center. Several major donors to DeLay's<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texans_for_a_Republican_Majority" title="Texans for a Republican Majority" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Texans for a Republican Majority</a> PAC were also invited. It was later revealed that the skybox was leased and paid for by Jack Abramoff, at an estimated cost of $3,600–7,500. Although Federal law at the time did not require disclosure or reimbursement of this sort of gift-giving from a lobbyist to a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee" title="Political action committee" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">PAC</a>, the law was changed several months later, and the incident was cited in later criticisms of DeLay's acceptance of gifts.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[7]</a>

On May 25, DeLay departed on a 10-day trip to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland" title="Scotland" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Scotland</a> together with Abramoff and DeLay's aides Tony Rudy and Susan Hirschmann. In documents filed after the trip as required by House rules, DeLay claimed that the purpose of the trip was primarily "educational", to hold meetings with Conservative leaders in Britain, including former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and that the total cost of the trip was $28,106. The filings indicated that the trip was being paid for by the "National Center for Public Policy Research", a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_tank" title="Think tank" style=" text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">think tank</a> then chaired by Jack Abramoff.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#cite_note-8" style=" text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background-image: none;">[8]</a>

On the same date as DeLay's trip departure, Abramoff clients eLottery and the Mississippi Choctaw sent checks totaling $50,000 to the National Center for Public Policy Research. eLottery and the tribe both later claimed that they were unaware that the money was intended to pay for a trip.<a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28252-2005Mar11.html" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaavkleqvr4xn3pgqkamqhduxfqtu7kttkpd5ra8ainfartq2irxfwt2qedafttj2fspioe1ecoleuowwjgzyab="AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB" ikegorxxhqb="IkeGOrxXhqB" ua9bfcm0lazuh="uA9Bfcm0lAZuh" yiead="YIeAD" caqsz4kcmuaaaaasuvork5cyii="); padding-right: 13px; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;" xmlns:data="data">[7]</a>

Details later emerged that many parts of the trip were paid for directly on Abramoff's credit card, and a card belonging to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_A._Buckham" title="Edwin A. Buckham" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Edwin A. Buckham</a>, another prominent lobbyist. Although the trip did include a meeting with Margaret Thatcher, according to detailed bills leaked to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Post" title="Washington Post" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Washington Post</a>, the trip also included golf at the exclusive <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Course_at_St_Andrews" title="Old Course at St Andrews" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">St. Andrews Golf Resort</a>, theater tickets, and "superior" room accommodations at the London Four Seasons. The total cost of the trip was estimated[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words" title="Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">by whom?</a>] at $70,000–120,000, of which approximately $12,000 was reimbursed to Abramoff by Preston Gates.

The length of the trip, expense, source of funding, and activities of the trip are significant as House ethics rules at the time prevented representatives from accepting gifts from private parties if it would "create the appearance of using public office for private gain." <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12416-2005Apr23.html" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaavkleqvr4xn3pgqkamqhduxfqtu7kttkpd5ra8ainfartq2irxfwt2qedafttj2fspioe1ecoleuowwjgzyab="AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB" ikegorxxhqb="IkeGOrxXhqB" ua9bfcm0lazuh="uA9Bfcm0lAZuh" yiead="YIeAD" caqsz4kcmuaaaaasuvork5cyii="); padding-right: 13px; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;" xmlns:data="data">[8]</a>

<h2 style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Justice Department investigation<span class="mw-editsection" style=" -webkit-user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;">[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff&action=edit&section=2" title="Edit section: Justice Department investigation" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">edit source</a> | <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff&veaction=edit&section=2" title="Edit section: Justice Department investigation" class="mw-editsection-visualeditor" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">edit</a>]</h2>

Currently,[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#Chronological_items" title="Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">when?</a>] there is an investigation by the Justice Department to examine widespread claims and allegations of corruption of law-makers connected with Jack Abramoff. The investigation is attempting to determine and evaluate evidence on whether official acts were performed in exchange for campaign contributions or favors. According to a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Times" title="Washington Times" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Washington Times</a> story using an unnamed source working on the investigation, the Justice Department is focusing on the so-called "first-tier" law-makers: Sens. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Burns" title="Conrad Burns" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Conrad Burns</a>, Montana Republican; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_L.Dorgan" title="Byron L. Dorgan" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Byron L. Dorgan</a>, North Dakota Democrat; and Minority Leader <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Reid" title="Harry Reid" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Harry Reid</a>, Nevada Democrat, along with Reps. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.D._Hayworth" title="J. D. Hayworth" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">J. D. Hayworth</a>, Arizona Republican, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ney" title="Bob Ney" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Bob Ney</a>, Ohio Republican.<a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20060111-093059-1441r" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaavkleqvr4xn3pgqkamqhduxfqtu7kttkpd5ra8ainfartq2irxfwt2qedafttj2fspioe1ecoleuowwjgzyab="AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB" ikegorxxhqb="IkeGOrxXhqB" ua9bfcm0lazuh="uA9Bfcm0lAZuh" yiead="YIeAD" caqsz4kcmuaaaaasuvork5cyii="); padding-right: 13px; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;" xmlns:data="data">[9]</a>

<h2 style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2000007629395px; background-image: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Politicians who have received direct contributions from Abramoff<span class="mw-editsection" style=" -webkit-user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;">[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff&action=edit&section=3" title="Edit section: Politicians who have received direct contributions from Abramoff" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">edit source</a> | <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff&veaction=edit&section=3" title="Edit section: Politicians who have received direct contributions from Abramoff" class="mw-editsection-visualeditor" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">edit</a>]</h2>

FEC records show that Abramoff gave $172,933 for Republican candidates, $88,985 to Republican causes and nothing to Democratic candidates or organizations.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#cite_note-9" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[9]</a> A compilation of the complete FEC record and its analysis of contributions made by Jack Abramoff, only, independently confirmed the latter claim. <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2006/2/17/01135/9251" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaavkleqvr4xn3pgqkamqhduxfqtu7kttkpd5ra8ainfartq2irxfwt2qedafttj2fspioe1ecoleuowwjgzyab="AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB" ikegorxxhqb="IkeGOrxXhqB" ua9bfcm0lazuh="uA9Bfcm0lAZuh" yiead="YIeAD" caqsz4kcmuaaaaasuvork5cyii="); padding-right: 13px; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;" xmlns:data="data">[10]</a> Some of the most prominent who have received such contributions and who may have other connections to Abramoff include:

<dt style=" font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0.1em;">President George W Bush (R)</dt>

</dl>

As a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Pioneer" title="Bush Pioneer" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Bush Pioneer</a>, Abramoff raised over $100,000 for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W.Bush_presidential_campaign,2004" title="George W. Bush presidential campaign, 2004" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">George W. Bush reelection campaign</a> in addition to the $6,000 which he personally contributed.<a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID=2006-01-04T153929Z_01_SIB452554_RTRUKOC_0_US-CRIME-ABRAMOFF-BUSH.xml" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaavkleqvr4xn3pgqkamqhduxfqtu7kttkpd5ra8ainfartq2irxfwt2qedafttj2fspioe1ecoleuowwjgzyab="AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB" ikegorxxhqb="IkeGOrxXhqB" ua9bfcm0lazuh="uA9Bfcm0lAZuh" yiead="YIeAD" caqsz4kcmuaaaaasuvork5cyii="); padding-right: 13px; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;" xmlns:data="data">[11]</a><a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060117/ap_on_go_pr_wh/white_house_abramoff;ylt=AgN3zRwO.HpQ8PDKGKqPX82yFz4D;ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaavkleqvr4xn3pgqkamqhduxfqtu7kttkpd5ra8ainfartq2irxfwt2qedafttj2fspioe1ecoleuowwjgzyab="AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB" ikegorxxhqb="IkeGOrxXhqB" ua9bfcm0lazuh="uA9Bfcm0lAZuh" yiead="YIeAD" caqsz4kcmuaaaaasuvork5cyii="); padding-right: 13px; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;" xmlns:data="data">[12]</a>

Although the White House insists President Bush never met Jack Abramoff outside of large gatherings, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Texas_Observer" title="The Texas Observer" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">The Texas Observer</a> reports that in May 2001 Abramoff "charged two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President." <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.texasobserver.org/showForPrint_new.asp?ArticleID=13" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaavkleqvr4xn3pgqkamqhduxfqtu7kttkpd5ra8ainfartq2irxfwt2qedafttj2fspioe1ecoleuowwjgzyab="AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB" ikegorxxhqb="IkeGOrxXhqB" ua9bfcm0lazuh="uA9Bfcm0lAZuh" yiead="YIeAD" caqsz4kcmuaaaaasuvork5cyii="); padding-right: 13px; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;" xmlns:data="data">[13]</a>

Time Magazine also reports having at least five White House publicity photos, or 'clicks' showing Bush together with Abramoff or Abramoff's family members.

<dt style=" font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0.1em;">U.S. Rep. & Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX)</dt>

</dl>

Joining Abramoff on a vacation was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_DeLay" title="Tom DeLay" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Tom DeLay</a>, whose airfare to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London" title="London" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">London</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland" title="Scotland" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Scotland</a> in 2000 was charged to an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Express" title="American Express" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">American Express</a>card issued to Abramoff, according to two sources who know Abramoff's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card" title="Credit card" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">credit card</a> account number and to a copy of a travel invoice displaying that number. DeLay's expenses during the same trip for food, phone calls and other items at a golf course hotel in Scotland were billed to a different credit card also used on the trip by a second registered Washington lobbyist, Edwin A. Buckham, according to receipts documenting that portion of the trip.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#cite_note-10" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[10]</a>

<dt style=" font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0.1em;">U.S. Rep. & Former Chairman of the House Administration Committee Bob Ney (R-OH)</dt>

</dl>

Emails between Abramoff and the Tigua's political consultant show that Ney solicited the Tigua to pay for part of a 2002 golf trip to Scotland, knowing full well that solicitation of travel is specifically prohibited by House rules. Shortly after Ney returned from Scotland, he was scheduled to meet with members of the Tigua tribal council. Prior to that meeting, Abramoff reminded the Tigua that "for obvious reasons" the golf trip would not be mentioned at the meeting, but that Ney show his appreciation "in other ways", which was, Abramoff pointed out, just what the tribe wanted. Although the tribe never ended up paying for the golf trip, Ney's attempt to tie the gift of the trip to the legislative assistance the tribe was seeking likely violates federal criminal law.In 2002, after Abramoff and Reed closed the casino of the Tigua tribe, Abramoff persuaded the tribe to hire him to lobby Congress to reopen the casino. After Abramoff met with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ney" title="Bob Ney" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Bob Ney</a> to ask him to push the legislation, the Tigua (by overnight mail) sent three checks to Ney's political committees, totaling $32,000. The exchange of campaign contributions in return for Ney's support of an amendment to reopen the Tigua's casino constituted <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bribery" title="Bribery" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">bribery</a>.[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">citation needed</a>]

Ney lied when he said he was "duped" by Abramoff and lied again on financial disclosure forms when he said that a nonprofit had paid for the trip. However, Safavian, in an email to his government employer seeking permission to go on the trip, states that Abramoff personally extended invitations to all the guests. Ney also said he made the trip to speak to Scottish parliamentarians. But the Scottish parliament wasn't in session at the time he was in Scotland.

Ney is also implicated in the separate <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff" title="Jack Abramoff" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Abramoff SunCruz</a> scandal.

Bob Ney is now[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Dates_and_numbers#Chronological_items" title="Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">when?</a>] setting up a legal defense fund for Abramoff.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_influence_of_Jack_Abramoff#cite_note-11" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[11]</a>

Bob Ney was "Representative #1," in Abramoff's January 3 plea agreement <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/abramoff_info_010306.pdf" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" http="http" upload.wikimedia.org="upload.wikimedia.org" wikipedia="wikipedia" commons="commons" icons-mini-file_acrobat.gif="Icons-mini-file_acrobat.gif" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat">[14]</a>,<a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10218892/site/newsweek/" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaavkleqvr4xn3pgqkamqhduxfqtu7kttkpd5ra8ainfartq2irxfwt2qedafttj2fspioe1ecoleuowwjgzyab="AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB" ikegorxxhqb="IkeGOrxXhqB" ua9bfcm0lazuh="uA9Bfcm0lAZuh" yiead="YIeAD" caqsz4kcmuaaaaasuvork5cyii="); padding-right: 13px; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;" xmlns:data="data">[15]</a>. On September 15, 2006 Ney's guilty plea for bribery related to Abramoff's clients and others was submitted to the court and made public.

<dt style=" font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0.1em;">U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, CD1 (R-NM)</dt>

</dl>

Congresswoman Heather Wilson received $1,000 in a direct contribution from Abramoff.

<dt style=" font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0.1em;">U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney, III (R-FL);</dt>

</dl>

Congressman <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Feeney" title="Tom Feeney" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Tom Feeney</a> (R-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida" title="Florida" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">FL</a>) joined other Republicans on the now infamous[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words" title="Wikipedia:Avoid weasel words" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">according to whom?</a>] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trips_funded_by_Jack_Abramoff" title="List of trips funded by Jack Abramoff" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">golf trip to Scotland</a> with Abramoff in 2003.

<dt style=" font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0.1em;">U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA)</dt>

</dl>

In 2003, Abramoff gave <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pombo" title="Richard Pombo" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Richard Pombo's</a> (R-CA) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee" title="Political action committee" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">PAC</a> $5,000. Abramoff also gave $2,000, the maximum allowed, to Pombo's congressional campaign committee that same year.

On January 8, 2006, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Times" title="Los Angeles Times" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Los Angeles Times</a> reported that "Pombo helped one of Abramoff's clients, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mashpee_Indians&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Mashpee Indians (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Mashpee Indians</a> in Massachusetts, gain official recognition as a tribe; the congressman received contributions from the lobbyist and the tribe in that instance."<a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-banker8jan08,0,1764103.story?coll=la-home-headlines&track=morenews" style="text-decoration: none; padding-right: 13px; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaavkleqvr4xn3pgqkamqhduxfqtu7kttkpd5ra8ainfartq2irxfwt2qedafttj2fspioe1ecoleuowwjgzyab="AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB" ikegorxxhqb="IkeGOrxXhqB" ua9bfcm0lazuh="uA9Bfcm0lAZuh" yiead="YIeAD" caqsz4kcmuaaaaasuvork5cyii="); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-position: 100% 50%;" xmlns:data="data">[16]</a>

<dt style=" font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0.1em;">U.S. Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-NJ)</dt>

</dl>

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey" title="New Jersey" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">New Jersey</a> Republican Rep. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Ferguson_(New_Jersey)" title="Mike Ferguson (New Jersey)" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Mike Ferguson</a> is not going to give back the $1,000 he received in 2001, according to his spokeswoman Abby Bird. <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050818/NEWS03/508180435/1007/BUSINESS" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaavkleqvr4xn3pgqkamqhduxfqtu7kttkpd5ra8ainfartq2irxfwt2qedafttj2fspioe1ecoleuowwjgzyab="AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB" ikegorxxhqb="IkeGOrxXhqB" ua9bfcm0lazuh="uA9Bfcm0lAZuh" yiead="YIeAD" caqsz4kcmuaaaaasuvork5cyii="); padding-right: 13px; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;" xmlns:data="data">[17]</a>

<dt style=" font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0.1em;">U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-NJ)</dt>

</dl>

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Jersey" title="New Jersey" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">New Jersey</a> Republican Rep. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_LoBiondo" title="Frank LoBiondo" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Frank LoBiondo</a> has planned or has given back the $1

==

tie to AFP via tim phillips see fang

<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2009/05/29/170792/afp-timphillips-astroturf/">http://thinkprogress.org/health/2009/05/29/170792/afp-timphillips-astroturf/</a>

==

wrecking crew: USAF

<a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff">http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff</a>

Jack A. Abramoff, a long-time Washington insider, has been a Republican lobbyist and fundraiser and was a <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Bush_Pioneer" title="Bush Pioneer">Bush Pioneer</a>. According to the <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=College_Republican_National_Committee&action=edit" class="new" title="College Republican National Committee">College Republican National Committee</a> (CRNC) <a href="http://www.cfnc.org" class="external text" title="http://www.cfnc.org" rel="nofollow">web site</a>, he was Senior Director of Government Affairs for the <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Greenberg_Traurig&action=edit" class="new" title="Greenberg Traurig">Greenberg Traurig</a> law and lobbying firm from January 2001 to March 2004, and was CRNC National Chairman from 1981-85. He is also a Director of the <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/National_Center_for_Public_Policy_Research" title="National Center for Public Policy Research">National Center for Public Policy Research</a> <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Think_tank" title="Think tank">think tank</a>.

<h2>Contents</h2>

[<a class="internal" id="togglelink">hide</a>]</div>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Quotes">1 Quotes</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Exemplfying_the_.22political_decadence_of_late-stage_conservatism.22">2 Exemplfying the "political decadence of late-stage conservatism"</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Master_of_Sleaze">3 Master of Sleaze</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Ongoing_investigations">4 Ongoing investigations</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Abramoff.2C_Kidan.2C_Moscatiello.2C_Ferrari.2C_Fiorillo:The_2001_Murder_of_Konstantinos.22Gus.22_Boulis">4.1 Abramoff, Kidan, Moscatiello, Ferrari, Fiorillo: The 2001 Murder of Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Abramoff.2C_Scanlon.2C_Ney.2C_Reed.2C_Safavian-2002_Paid_Trip_to_Scotland">4.2 Abramoff, Scanlon, Ney, Reed, Safavian-2002 Paid Trip to Scotland</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Abramoff-Kidan:_fraud_and_conspiracy">4.3 Abramoff-Kidan: fraud and conspiracy</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Abramoff-J.Steven_Griles:conflict-of-interest">4.4 Abramoff-J. Steven Griles: conflict-of-interest</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Committee_on_Indian_Affairs">5 Committee on Indian Affairs</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Capital_Athletic_Foundation">6 Capital Athletic Foundation</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Channel_One">7 Channel One</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Republican_Activism">8 Republican Activism</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#College_Republicans">8.1 College Republicans</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#United_Students_of_America_Foundation">8.2 United Students of America Foundation</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Connecting_with_the_Heritage_Foundation">8.3 Connecting with the Heritage Foundation</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Biographical_Profile">9 Biographical Profile</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Greenberg_Traurig_Biography">9.1 Greenberg Traurig Biography</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Professional_Experience">9.2 Professional Experience</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Books">10 Books</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Related_Resources">11 Related Resources</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#External_links">12 External links</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Websites">12.1 Websites</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Biographical">12.2 Biographical</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Political_Connections_.26_Contributions">12.3 Political Connections & Contributions</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Interviews_.26_Testimony">12.4 Interviews & Testimony</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Radio.2FAudio">12.5 Radio/Audio</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Jack_Abramoff#Articles_.26_Commentary">12.6 Articles & Commentary</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

</ul>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h2><a id="Quotes" name="Quotes"> Quotes</a></h2>

<ul>

<li>"Can you smell money?!?!?!" Jack Abramoff wrote. --Quoted May 1, 2005, New York Times. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/magazine/01ABRAMOFF.html?" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/magazine/01ABRAMOFF.html?" rel="nofollow">[1]</a></li>

</ul>

<ul>

<li>"This is really high on the priority list of tribal concerns. ... This is a cash cow in many circumstances, and tribes are concerned about protection of tribal assets." <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53609-2004Jul15.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53609-2004Jul15.html" rel="nofollow">[2]</a></li>

</ul>

<h2><a id="Exemplfying_the.22political_decadence_of_late-stage_conservatism.22" name="Exemplfying_the.22political_decadence_of_late-stage_conservatism.22"> Exemplfying the "political decadence of late-stage conservatism"</a></h2>

"Well-connected Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff came into the news lately when it turned out he had collected more than $9 million in fees from various Indian tribes during the past two years, although tribal interests faced little political opposition at that time. (He was dumped by his firm, Greenberg Traurig, which cited 'personal transactions and related conduct which are unacceptable to the firm.' Abramoff responded with a statement noting that Washington lobbying 'is different from other areas in the practice of law.' Indeed.) But while Abramoff is far from Washington's first corrupt lobbyist, he's among a troika of <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Right-wing&action=edit" class="new" title="Right-wing">right-wing</a> operatives who exemplify a more recent trend: the political decadence of late-stage <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Conservatism&action=edit" class="new" title="Conservatism">conservatism</a>." <a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0404.whoswho.html" class="external text" title="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0404.whoswho.html" rel="nofollow">Source: Washington Monthly, April 2004</a>.

<h2><a id="Master_of_Sleaze" name="Master_of_Sleaze"> Master of Sleaze</a></h2>

"Only a genius like Abramoff could make money lobbying against an Indian tribe's casino and then turn around and make money defending that tribe against himself. Only a giant like Abramoff would have the guts to use one tribe's casino money to finance a <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Focus_on_the_Family" title="Focus on the Family">Focus on the Family</a> crusade against gambling in order to shut down a rival tribe's casino.

"Only an artist like Abramoff could suggest to a tribe that it pay him by taking out life insurance policies on its eldest members. Then when the elders dropped off they could funnel the insurance money through a private school and into his pockets.

"This is sleaze of a high order. And yet according to reports in The Washington Post and elsewhere, Abramoff accomplished it all," wrote David Brooks in the March 22, 2005, New York Times. <a href="http://www.commercialalert.org/blog/archives/2005/03/channel_one_and.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.commercialalert.org/blog/archives/2005/03/channel_one_and.html" rel="nofollow">[3]</a>

<h2><a id="Ongoing_investigations" name="Ongoing_investigations"> Ongoing investigations</a></h2>

<h3><a id="Abramoff.2C_Kidan.2C_Moscatiello.2C_Ferrari.2C_Fiorillo:The_2001_Murder_of_Konstantinos.22Gus.22_Boulis" name="Abramoff.2C_Kidan.2C_Moscatiello.2C_Ferrari.2C_Fiorillo:The_2001_Murder_of_Konstantinos.22Gus.22_Boulis"> Abramoff, Kidan, Moscatiello, Ferrari, Fiorillo: The 2001 Murder of Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis</a></h3>

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>"Three men have been arrested in the 2001 ambush slaying of Miami businessman Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis - a murder that happened a few months after he sold a fleet of casino boats to prominent Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a partner." <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092700602.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092700602.html" rel="nofollow">[4]</a></dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

On September 27, 2005, Florida police arrested Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello, Anthony "Little Tony" Ferrari and James "Pudgy" Fiorillo for their involvement in the Mafia-style murder of "Gus" Bouilis. Moscatiello is a known member of the Gambino crime family and turned up in wire taps of <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=John_Gotti&action=edit" class="new" title="John Gotti">John Gotti</a> in the '80s. Abramoff and Kidan paid Moscatiello and his daughter $145,000 for catering and other work shortly before the murder. <a href="http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w050815&s=crowley081705" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w050815&s=crowley081705" rel="nofollow">[5]</a> Ft. Lauderdale police Sgt. Tim Bronson said additional arrests were possible in the case.

<h3><a id="Abramoff.2C_Scanlon.2C_Ney.2C_Reed.2C_Safavian-2002_Paid_Trip_to_Scotland" name="Abramoff.2C_Scanlon.2C_Ney.2C_Reed.2C_Safavian-2002_Paid_Trip_to_Scotland"> Abramoff, Scanlon, Ney, Reed, Safavian-2002 Paid Trip to Scotland</a></h3>

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>"<a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/David_Safavian" title="David Safavian">David Safavian</a> was arrested Monday [September 19, 2005] and charged with making false statements and obstructing a federal investigation relating to a 2002 golf outing to Scotland with Abramoff, former Christian Coalition executive <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Ralph_Reed" title="Ralph Reed">Ralph Reed</a>, Rep. <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Robert_Ney" title="Robert Ney">Robert Ney</a>, R-Ohio, and others."</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>"Safavian, a former Abramoff lobbying associate, abruptly resigned last week as the Bush administration's top procurement official, three days before his arrest." <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/22/AR2005092200767.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/22/AR2005092200767.html" rel="nofollow">[6]</a></dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

Regarding Abramoff's confessed reason for inviting Safavian:

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>"When a colleague asked in an e-mail why Mr. Safavian had been invited -- 'I like him but didn't know u did as much. Business angle?' -- Mr. Abramoff didn't mince words. 'Total business angle,' he e-mailed back. 'He is new COS of GSA.'" <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/25/AR2005092501104.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/25/AR2005092501104.html" rel="nofollow">[7]</a></dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

Abramoff made a <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/abramoff-plea1.html" class="external text" title="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/abramoff-plea1.html" rel="nofollow">plea agreement</a> with Federal prosecutors on January 3, 2006.

<h3><a id="Abramoff-Kidan:fraud_and_conspiracy" name="Abramoff-Kidan:fraud_and_conspiracy"> Abramoff-Kidan: fraud and conspiracy</a></h3>

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>"Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a business partner were indicted by a federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday [August 11, 2005], charged with five counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy in their purchase of a fleet of Florida gambling boats from a businessman who was later killed in a gangland-style hit.</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>"Abramoff, 46, was arrested in Los Angeles in the late afternoon and was expected to be taken before a U.S. magistrate there on Friday. He was indicted along with <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Adam_Kidan&action=edit" class="new" title="Adam Kidan">Adam Kidan</a>, the former owner of the Dial-a-Mattress franchise in Washington. Kidan, 41, of New York City, will surrender to the FBI here by Friday morning, his attorney, Martin I. Jaffe, said in a written statement. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/11/AR2005081101108.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/11/AR2005081101108.html" rel="nofollow">[8]</a></dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

<h3><a id="Abramoff-J.Steven_Griles:conflict-of-interest" name="Abramoff-J.Steven_Griles:conflict-of-interest"> Abramoff-J. Steven Griles: conflict-of-interest</a></h3>

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>"Then-Deputy Interior Secretary <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/J._Steven_Griles" title="J. Steven Griles">J. Steven Griles</a> promised in 2002 to block an Indian casino that would complete with one operated by clients of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to e-mail sent by Abramoff nearly three years ago. The lobbyist later told colleagues he was trying to arrange for his law firm to hire Griles. Federal investigators are looking into the potential conflict-of-interest between Griles and Abramoff." [Feds investigating Abramoff over casino dealings. Greenwire. 6 September, 2005.] Griles later plead guilty to obstruction of justice.</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

<h2><a id="Committee_on_Indian_Affairs" name="Committee_on_Indian_Affairs"> Committee on Indian Affairs</a></h2>

The following comes from a September 29, 2004, press release posted by the Committee on Indian Affairs. <a href="http://indian.senate.gov/108press/092904.htm" class="external autonumber" title="http://indian.senate.gov/108press/092904.htm" rel="nofollow">[9]</a>

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>"After seven months of investigating charges of Indian tribes being victimized by high-profile lobbyists, today Senator <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Ben_Nighthorse_Campbell&action=edit" class="new" title="Ben Nighthorse Campbell">Ben Nighthorse Campbell</a> presided over a hearing of the Indian Affairs Committee and received testimony that Jack Abramoff and <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Michael_Scanlon&action=edit" class="new" title="Michael Scanlon">Mike Scanlon</a>, and the corporations they owned, had walked away with nearly seventy million dollars in fees for what can only be described as less than honorable dealings.</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>"'I am horrified by what I believe these men and their accomplices pulled off to the detriment of the tribes and their members. By manipulating tribal elections and installing people favorable to their greedy ends, they engineered a situation and enriched themselves --- all the while holding these same Indian people in incredibly low regard.' Said Campbell.</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>"The low regard in which these men held their Indian clients was clearly evidenced by emails, entered into the hearing record today by Senator Campbell. 'They called them monkeys, mofos, morons and idiots, and even worse!' Said Campbell. 'I could not believe this until I had actually seen the emails. And this from the man who called <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Racist&action=edit" class="new" title="Racist">racist</a> the Washington Post reporter that broke the story on his fraudulent activities.'"</dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

<h2><a id="Capital_Athletic_Foundation" name="Capital_Athletic_Foundation"> Capital Athletic Foundation</a></h2>

<ul>

<li>According to a heavily-documented March 1, 2005, letter from Melanie Sloan of <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Citizens_for_Responsibility_and_Ethics_in_Washington&action=edit" class="new" title="Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington">Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington</a> about Abramoff, the <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Capital_Athletic_Foundation&action=edit" class="new" title="Capital Athletic Foundation">Capital Athletic Foundation</a> (CAF) is a <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=501c3&action=edit" class="new" title="501c3">501c3</a> organization "started by Abramoff in 2000 with only $12,850." <a href="http://www.citizensforethics.org/filelibrary/20050301_Abramoff_Memo.pdf" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.citizensforethics.org/filelibrary/20050301_Abramoff_Memo.pdf" rel="nofollow">[10]</a></li>

</ul>

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>Sloan's information was taken from R. Jeffrey Smith's September 28, 2004, Washington Post article <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55283-2004Sep27.html?nav=rss_nation" class="external text" title="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55283-2004Sep27.html?nav=rss_nation" rel="nofollow">"Foundation's Funds Diverted From Mission. Records Detail Spending By GOP Lobbyist Abramoff."</a></dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

<dl>

<dd>

<ul>

<li>In 2001, CAF received $1 million from the Coushatta and $177,415 from Foxcom.</li>

<li>The Coushatta apparently believed that the donation was for a sky box from which Abramoff would lobby Members of Congress during Redskins games.</li>

<li>In 2002, CAF collected $2.56 million from 9 donors including 3 tribes.</li>

<li>In 2003, CAF collected $2.15 million from tribes, Mike Scanlon and an internet casino client of Abramoff��s. $2.13 million of the money went to the <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Eshkol_Academy&action=edit" class="new" title="Eshkol Academy">Eshkol Academy</a>, a school started [in 2001] by Abramoff. (See below.)</li>

<li>In a February 2003 email, Abramoff told Scanlon to make sure that his share of money went to Eshkol directly – 'using school as conduit for some of our activities . .. If that won’t fly with them, use CAF.'</li>

<li>CAF also paid $120,000 in August 2002 for Abramoff, <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Robert_W._Ney" title="Robert W. Ney">Ney</a> [Rep. R-OH], <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Ralph_Reed" title="Ralph Reed">Ralph Reed</a> and then-<a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=General_Services_Administration&action=edit" class="new" title="General Services Administration">General Services Administration</a> Chief of Staff <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/David_Safavian" title="David Safavian">David Safavian</a> to St. Andrews to play golf with a stop in London on way back. Ney later claimed that the trip’s purpose was to raise money for a foundation, but there were no fundraising events during the course of the trip."</li>

</ul>

</dd>

</dl>

<ul>

<li>On April 17, 2005, Tax Analysts reported that in a March 16, 2005, letter, Senate Finance Committee Chair <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Chuck_Grassley" title="Chuck Grassley">Chuck Grassley</a> (R-Iowa) and ranking minority member <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Max_Baucus" title="Max Baucus">Max Baucus</a> (D-MT) had "asked lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his wife, Pamela, for various financial and organizational data regarding the Capital Athletic Foundation (CAF), a charity the Abramoffs founded," and "requested information about three other organizations Abramoff has had ties to: <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Eshkol_Inc.&action=edit" class="new" title="Eshkol Inc.">Eshkol Inc.</a>, the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), and <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Kaygold_LLC&action=edit" class="new" title="Kaygold LLC">Kaygold LLC</a>, a consulting service owned by Abramoff. (For the Finance Committee letter, see Doc 2005-5551.)"</li>

</ul>

<dl>

<dd>"The committee opened the investigation following allegations that Abramoff used NCPPR and CAF to pay for overseas trips for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and other Republican lawmakers and that he attempted to influence lawmakers with large donations from various American Indian tribes." <a href="http://66.218.71.225/search/cache?p=%22Jack+Abramoff%22&prssweb=Search&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&b=321&u=www.taxanalysts.com/www/taxwirewww.nsf/DocNoLookup/22D06AC806C9A08285256FC7007534D7%3FOpenDocument&w=%22jack+abramoff%22&d=EA69CD5ADB&icp=1&.intl=us" class="external autonumber" title="http://66.218.71.225/search/cache?p=%22Jack+Abramoff%22&prssweb=Search&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&b=321&u=www.taxanalysts.com/www/taxwirewww.nsf/DocNoLookup/22D06AC806C9A08285256FC7007534D7%3FOpenDocument&w=%22jack+abramoff%22&d=EA69CD5ADB&icp=1&.intl=us" rel="nofollow">[11]</a><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41850-2005Mar16?language=printer" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41850-2005Mar16?language=printer" rel="nofollow">[12]</a></dd>

</dl>

<ul>

<li>"The committee had asked Abramoff to provide a list of the foundation’s employees and their compensation packages, an accounting of the travel and conferences attended by the foundation’s employees, and details of the foundation’s investments, among other information."</li>

</ul>

<dl>

<dd>As of April 20, 2005, The Hill reported that Abramoff had not been "responsive" to the Committee's request that the documents be provided by April 15, 2005. <a href="http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Business/042005.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Business/042005.html" rel="nofollow">[13]</a></dd>

</dl>

<h2><a id="Channel_One" name="Channel_One"> Channel One</a></h2>

<a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Channel_One&action=edit" class="new" title="Channel One">Channel One</a> is the "in-school marketing company, which compels 8 million kids [grades six through twelve] to watch two minutes of ads each schoolday." Commercial Alert reported February 13, 2005, that Channel One has "big troubles."

<ul>

<li>First of all, its president, <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Jim_Ritts&action=edit" class="new" title="Jim Ritts">Jim Ritts</a>, quit.</li>

<li>Secondly, "Jack Abramoff. Channel One's main Washington lobbyist, has quit, and is now under investigation by a federal grand jury, according to the Washington Post. This is very bad for Channel One, because it desperately needs political influence to keep its contracts with the federal government." <a href="http://www.commercialalert.org/blog/archives/2005/02/channel_ones_tr.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.commercialalert.org/blog/archives/2005/02/channel_ones_tr.html" rel="nofollow">[14]</a></li>

</ul>

<h2><a id="Republican_Activism" name="Republican_Activism"> Republican Activism</a></h2>

<h3><a id="College_Republicans" name="College_Republicans"> College Republicans</a></h3>

<ul>

<li>"Abramoff got his start in politics while at Brandeis, chairing the <a href="http://ma.collegerepublicans.org/about.html" class="external text" title="http://ma.collegerepublicans.org/about.html" rel="nofollow">Massachusetts Alliance of College Republicans</a> from 1980-1981. Teaming with Harvard contemporary and lifelong fellow traveler <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Grover_Norquist" title="Grover Norquist">Grover Norquist</a>, Abramoff's organizational acumen allegedly won Massachusetts for Reagan." <a href="http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/10/who-is-jack-abramoff-college.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/10/who-is-jack-abramoff-college.html" rel="nofollow">[15]</a></li>

</ul>

<dl>

<dd>

<ul>

<li>"'The College Republicans have been credited with <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Ronald_Reagan" title="Ronald Reagan">Ronald Reagan</a>'s paperslim victory in Massachusetts' in 1980 as well. As head of the Massachusetts Federation of College Republican Clubs, Jack Abramoff (elected National Chairman in 1981) produced over 10,000 youth votes." <a href="http://www.crnc.org:8013/admin/editpage/downloads/CRNChistory.pdf" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.crnc.org:8013/admin/editpage/downloads/CRNChistory.pdf" rel="nofollow">[16]</a></li>

</ul>

</dd>

</dl>

<ul>

<li>Abramoff next served as National Chairman of the College Republican National Committee 1981-1985. <a href="http://www.crnc.org/aboutCRNC/famousCRs.cfm" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.crnc.org/aboutCRNC/famousCRs.cfm" rel="nofollow">[17]</a></li>

</ul>

<h3><a id="United_Students_of_America_Foundation" name="United_Students_of_America_Foundation"> United Students of America Foundation</a></h3>

"While working for the College Republicans, [Abramoff] and Norquist set up the <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=United_Students_of_America_Foundation&action=edit" class="new" title="United Students of America Foundation">United Students of America Foundation</a>, a <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=501c3&action=edit" class="new" title="501c3">501(c)3</a> 'dedicated to educating students on the need to defund political activism on campus' that funneled money to <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Conservative" title="Conservative">conservative</a> causes." <a href="http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/10/who-is-jack-abramoff-college.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/10/who-is-jack-abramoff-college.html" rel="nofollow">[18]</a>

In October of 1984, Abramoff organized <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Student_Liberation_Day_Coalition&action=edit" class="new" title="Student Liberation Day Coalition">Student Liberation Day Coalition</a> to honor the anniversary of the US's invasion of Grenada. Critics blasted the event, sponsored by the <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=United_Students_of_America_Foundation&action=edit" class="new" title="United Students of America Foundation">United Students of America Foundation</a> for its partisan stance. Abramoff denied the allegations, "It's not really a partisan thing or a campaign thing. We don't do stuff to promote the Republican cause in any way."

But, a letter written by Abramoff on the College Republicans' stationary read: "While the <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Student_Liberation_Day_Coalition&action=edit" class="new" title="Student Liberation Day Coalition">Student Liberation Day Coalition</a> is nonpartisan and intended only for educational purposes, I don't need to tell you how important this project is to our efforts as CRs College Republicans . I am confident that an impartial study of the contrasts between the Carter/Mondale failure in <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Iran" title="Iran">Iran</a> and the Reagan victory in <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Grenada" title="Grenada">Grenada</a> will be most enlightening to voters 12 days before the general election." Source: Kurtz, Howard and Babcock, Charles. "Two 'Nonpartisan' Foundations Push Grenada Rallies." Washington Post. 4 October 1984. A1.

<h3><a id="Connecting_with_the_Heritage_Foundation" name="Connecting_with_the_Heritage_Foundation"> Connecting with the Heritage Foundation</a></h3>

"Abramoff assumed the chair of the USA foundation in 1984. He became a member of the <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Council_for_National_Policy" title="Council for National Policy">Council for National Policy</a> in 1984. He founded the <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=International_Freedom_Foundation&action=edit" class="new" title="International Freedom Foundation">International Freedom Foundation</a> in 1985. He became executive director of the <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Ronald_Reagan" title="Ronald Reagan">Reagan</a> aligned organization <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Citizens_for_America&action=edit" class="new" title="Citizens for America">Citizens for America</a> in 1985. All of these are <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Heritage_Foundation" title="Heritage Foundation">Heritage Foundation</a> aligned organizations." <a href="http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/10/who-is-jack-abramoff-college.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://fugop.blogspot.com/2004/10/who-is-jack-abramoff-college.html" rel="nofollow">[19]</a><a href="http://www.seekgod.ca/cnp.a.htm#abramhoff" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.seekgod.ca/cnp.a.htm#abramhoff" rel="nofollow">[20]</a>

<h2><a id="Biographical_Profile" name="Biographical_Profile"> Biographical Profile</a></h2>

<h3><a id="Greenberg_Traurig_Biography" name="Greenberg_Traurig_Biography"> Greenberg Traurig Biography</a></h3>

<ul>

<li>An archive of Abramoff's biography from the Greenberg Traurig website describes him as follows:</li>

</ul>

<dl>

<dd>Jack Abramoff's practice focuses on building legislative coalitions, <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Grassroots&action=edit" class="new" title="Grassroots">grassroots</a> organizing and Washington, DC based <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Lobbying&action=edit" class="new" title="Lobbying">lobbying</a> efforts. Jack is considered a top issues strategist. He has been consistently named as one of the nation's most powerful and effective lobbyists in rankings by publications including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, National Journal, Roll Call and Washingtonian Magazine. Jack is directly involved in the Republican party and conservative movement leadership structures and is one of the leading fund raisers for the party and its congressional candidates. He is a former executive director of President Ronald Reagan's grassroots lobbying organization, Citizens For America, where he directed and crafted lobbying efforts on a broad range of issues. Jack also had a direct role in shaping the agenda of the second Reagan presidential term, which, in its later applications, ultimately brought the Republican Party to control of Congress in 1994.</dd>

</dl>

<dl>

<dd>"Before this position, Jack was twice elected Chairman of the College Republican National Committee beginning in 1981. He was [sic] oversaw the largest and most effective College Republican National Committee ever, with over 1100 chapters nationwide. He also changed the direction of the committee and made it more activist and conservative than ever before. Jack ran our most successful field programs until that time with very little funding by sending the field representatives out in vans to recruit for months at a time, making the committee more successful than ever before. Jack brought two famous future activists into his administration, Grover Norquist and <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Ralph_Reed" title="Ralph Reed">Ralph Reed</a>, as his Executive Directors. Before this time Jack ran the youth effort for Reagan in Massachusetts which produced 10,000 absentee ballot votes in Reagan’s 3000 vote margin of victory. Jack designed and ran the anti nuclear freeze campaign He is a regular lecturer at Georgetown Law Center on entertainment law topics. Jack has hands-on experience in the entertainment industry, he spent ten years as the producer of a number of feature motion pictures including Red Scorpion, an anti communist film made just after Jack’s term as national chairman of the College Republicans.'</dd>

</dl>

<dl>

<dd>

<dl>

<dd>Source: Internet Archive <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20030612020908/http://gtlaw.com/bios/govadmin/abramoffj.htm" class="external free" title="http://web.archive.org/web/20030612020908/http://gtlaw.com/bios/govadmin/abramoffj.htm" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20030612020908/http://gtlaw.com/bios/govadmin/abramoffj.htm</a></dd>

</dl>

</dd>

</dl>

<h3><a id="Professional_Experience" name="Professional_Experience"> Professional Experience</a></h3>

"Lobbyist with Greenberg Traurig, Jan. 2001-March 2004; founder of Eshkol Academy, a school for Orthodox Jews in Montgomery County, Md., 2001; lobbyist with Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, 1994-2001; Hollywood film producer as president of Regency Entertainment Group, 1986-94; director, Citizens for America, pro-Reagan lobbying group, 1985; chairman of college Republicans and member of executive committee, <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Republican_National_Committee" title="Republican National Committee">Republican National Committee</a>, early to mid-1980s." <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com/nationworld/washington/15-600404.html" class="external autonumber" title="http://www.heraldsun.com/nationworld/washington/15-600404.html" rel="nofollow">[21]</a>

<h2><a id="Books" name="Books"> Books</a></h2>

<ul>

<li>Jack Abramoff mentioned in Nina J. Easton's Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Crusade [Simon & Schuster 2000 <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Special:Booksources&isbn=0684838990" class="internal">ISBN 0684838990</a>].</li>

</ul>

<h2><a id="Related_Resources" name="Related_Resources"> Related Resources</a></h2>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Abramoff_Scandal_Timeline" title="Abramoff Scandal Timeline">Abramoff Scandal Timeline</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Bush_administration_scandals" title="Bush administration scandals">Bush administration scandals</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/John_Cornyn" title="John Cornyn">John Cornyn</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=K_Street_Project&action=edit" class="new" title="K Street Project">K Street Project</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Ralph_Reed:External_Links:Articles_%26_Commentary&action=edit" class="new" title="Ralph Reed: External Links: Articles & Commentary">Ralph Reed: External Links: Articles & Commentary</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Tom_DeLay" title="Tom DeLay">Tom DeLay</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Tom_DeLay:_External_Links&action=edit" class="new" title="Tom DeLay: External Links">Tom DeLay: External Links</a></li>

</ul>

<h2><a id="External_links" name="External_links">  External links </a></h2>

<h3><a id="Websites" name="Websites"> Websites</a></h3>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff" class="external text" title="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff" rel="nofollow">Sourcewatch: Jack Abramoff</a></li>

<li><a href="http://www.houseofscandal.org/" class="external text" title="http://www.houseofscandal.org/" rel="nofollow">Tom DeLay's "House of Scandal,"</a> <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Democratic_Congressional_Campaign_Committee" title="Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee">Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee</a> website.</li>

<li><a href="http://www.jackinthehouse.org/" class="external text" title="http://www.jackinthehouse.org/" rel="nofollow">"Jack in the House: How Jack Abramoff Bought Congress,"</a> [2005]; website critical of Abramoff by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.</li>

<li><a href="http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/capitol/index.html" class="external text" title="http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/capitol/index.html" rel="nofollow">Bill Moyers on America: "Capitol Crimes"</a> An interactive website on the Abramoff scandal. PBS.</li>

</ul>

<h3><a id="Biographical" name="Biographical"> Biographical</a></h3>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff" class="external text" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff" rel="nofollow">"Jack Abramoff"</a> in the Wikipedia.</li>

<li><a href="http://www.heraldsun.com/nationworld/washington/15-600404.html" class="external text" title="http://www.heraldsun.com/nationworld/washington/15-600404.html" rel="nofollow">"Biography Box on Jack Abramoff,"</a> The Herald Sun, undated.</li>

<li><a href="http://www.gtlaw.com/bios/govadmin/abramoffj.htm" class="external text" title="http://www.gtlaw.com/bios/govadmin/abramoffj.htm" rel="nofollow">Biography of Jack Abramoff</a>, website of Greenberg Traurig, LLP.</li>

<li><a href="http://www.crnc.org/aboutCRNC/famousCRs.cfm" class="external text" title="http://www.crnc.org/aboutCRNC/famousCRs.cfm" rel="nofollow">Profile: Jack Abramoff</a>, National Chairman, College Republican National Committee, 1981-1985, crnc.org.</li>

<li>Scott Stewart, <a href="http://www.crnc.org:8013/admin/editpage/downloads/CRNChistory.pdf" class="external text" title="http://www.crnc.org:8013/admin/editpage/downloads/CRNChistory.pdf" rel="nofollow">"The College Republicans �� A Brief History,"</a> crnc.org, July 24, 2002.</li>

</ul>

<h3><a id="Political_Connections.26_Contributions" name="Political_Connections.26_Contributions"> Political Connections & Contributions</a></h3>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://www.stealthpacs.org/agent.cfm?agent_id=4920" class="external text" title="http://www.stealthpacs.org/agent.cfm?agent_id=4920" rel="nofollow">"Selected Affiliations: (501(c) Non-Profit Groups Active in Elections): Jack A. Abramoff,"</a> <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Public_Citizen" title="Public Citizen">Public Citizen</a>.org.</li>

</ul>

<h3><a id="Interviews.26_Testimony" name="Interviews.26_Testimony"> Interviews & Testimony</a></h3>

<ul>

<li><a href="http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=108_senate_hearings&docid=f:96229.wais" class="external text" title="http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=108_senate_hearings&docid=f:96229.wais" rel="nofollow">Hearing Before the Committee on Indian Affairs</a>, United States Senate, 108th Congress, 2nd Session, on Oversight Hearing Regarding Tribal Lobbying Matters, et al., September 29, 2004.</li>

<li><a href="http://indian.senate.gov/2004hrgs/092904hrg/McCain.pdf" class="external text" title="http://indian.senate.gov/2004hrgs/092904hrg/McCain.pdf" rel="nofollow">Statement of Senator John McCain</a>, Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Oversight Hearing on Lobbying Practices Involving Indian Tribes, September 29, 2004.</li>

<li><a href="http://www.senate.gov/%7Escia/2004hrgs/092904hrg/milanovich.pdf" class="external text" title="http://www.senate.gov/_{scia/2004hrgs/092904hrg/milanovich.pdf}" rel="nofollow">Statement of Richard M. Milanovich, Chairman Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians</a>, Presented to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, September 29, 2004.</li>

</ul>

<h3><a id="Radio.2FAudio" name="Radio.2FAudio"> Radio/Audio</a></h3>

<ul>

<li>John Ydstie, <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4536224" class="external text" title="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4536224" rel="nofollow">"Washington Lobbyist Abramoff's Relationship to DeLay,"</a> <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/NPR" title="NPR">NPR</a>, March 15, 2005.</li>

</ul>

<h3><a id="Articles.26_Commentary" name="Articles.26_Commentary"> Articles & Commentary</a></h3>

<ul>

<li>See <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/w/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff:External_Links:Articles_%26_Commentary&action=edit" class="new" title="Jack Abramoff: External Links: Articles & Commentary">Jack Abramoff: External Links: Articles & Commentary</a>.</li>

</ul>

<a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Special:Categories" title="Special:Categories">Category</a>: <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/Category:Jack_Abramoff_scandal" title="Category:Jack Abramoff scandal">Jack Abramoff scandal</a>

</div>

----

Jack Abramoff himself made an appearance. Too bad he <a href="http://www.republicreport.org/2012/jack-abramoff-attempting-to-repair-our-democracy/">now works for the ethics watchdog United Republic</a>.

60 minutes attempts at redemption, mostly by upping stahl's outrage (also softball on grover and scotus guy)

===

wrote op-ed for Wa Times acc to th frank

<a href="http://thebaffler.com/notebook/2012/03/too_smart_to_fail">http://thebaffler.com/notebook/2012/03/too_smart_to_fail</a>

===

inforgraphic on connections

<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2005/12/24/GR2005122400084.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2005/12/24/GR2005122400084.html</a>

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<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff">http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff</a>

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good artl <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2004/0327nj1.htm">http://www.nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2004/0327nj1.htm</a>

LOBBYING

K Street Stumble

By <a onclick="s_objectID=" mailto:pstone="mailto:pstone" nationaljournal.com_1="nationaljournal.com_1" return="" this.s_oc="this.s_oc" e="e" true="true" href="mailto:pstone@nationaljournal.com" xmlns:mailto="mailto"> Peter H. Stone</a>, National Journal

ÃÂ© National Journal Group Inc.

Saturday, March 27, 2004

As presidential adviser Karl Rove set up shop in the West Wing in 2001, he was looking for an assistant to serve as the trusted gatekeeper of his new fiefdom. Superlobbyist and Republican fundraiser Jack Abramoff was happy to lend a hand. Abramoff knew just the right person for the job: his own assistant, Susan Ralston. She interviewed with Rove and got the position.

For a staunch conservative and smooth GOP operative like Abramoff, losing a valuable aide was well worth the opportunity to ingratiate himself with the president's senior political adviser. To be sure, Abramoff already had cachet at the Bush White House, with Republicans on Capitol Hill, and among conservative movement leaders. And over the past three years, he has accrued even more clout.

An active fundraiser for George W. Bush's 2000 election race, Abramoff has done even better in the 2004 campaign, raising more than $100,000 and becoming an elite "Pioneer" in the president's re-election drive. For years, Abramoff has been a generous donor and key fundraiser for powerful GOP members of Congress, notably House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. In the 2004 election cycle, Abramoff and his wife, Pam, have contributed $83,000 to Republicans, landing themselves at No. 93 on the nationwide list of individuals who have donated to either political party, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Nine other Washington lobbyists are higher on that list.

For almost a quarter-century, Abramoff has counted among his friends and allies anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and grassroots strategist and former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed. An Orthodox Jew, Abramoff has moved easily in conservative circles since the early 1980s, when he was chairman of the College Republican National Committee.

And as a high-profile lobbyist over the past few years, Abramoff was the engine that transformed a midsize lobbying practice at the law firm Greenberg Traurig into one of K Street's top money machines. Since early 2001, when Abramoff joined Greenberg Traurig's Washington office -- bringing with him six colleagues and several high-paying clients -- the firm's annual lobbying revenues have soared, exceeding $25 million in 2003 and landing the firm at No. 4 in revenues among all K Street firms.

Among Abramoff's and Greenberg Traurig's highest-paying clients have been four Indian tribes with lucrative gambling operations: the Agua Caliente of California, the Louisiana Coushattas, the Mississippi Choctaws, and the Saginaw Chippewas of Michigan.

Not only have the tribes paid an average of $5 million a year in fees to the firm, but at Abramoff's urging, they have also poured millions more into GOP campaign coffers and conservative groups' causes.

Small wonder that Abramoff -- who has said he charges most of his clients at least $500 an hour -- has become a GOP star among Washington lobbyists. Abramoff has been "popular with people in the administration," says another leading GOP lobbyist and fundraiser. "He's worked hard to raise money for various political committees and campaigns. He's at the very top level of political fundraising in the U.S." This source speculated that Abramoff is "No. 1 for congressional Republicans in raising Jewish money."

But late last month, Abramoff's image -- and his access to power brokers -- took a big hit. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., announced that he would hold a hearing after stories in The Town Talk newspaper in Alexandria, La., The Washington Post, and other news outlets questioned the huge lobbying fees that the Indian tribes paid to Abramoff and Greenberg Traurig. Some tribal leaders charged that the tribes received little in return for their exorbitant payments to Greenberg Traurig; that the tribes couldn't trace where some of the lobbying fees went; and that, in at least one case, funds were misused when a lucrative contract went to an Abramoff associate.

On March 2, Abramoff abruptly resigned from Greenberg Traurig, and now he's embroiled in what's shaping up as a legal and political fight to salvage his reputation.

Abramoff's rise as a power broker and his current fall from grace is an attention-getting tale of ambition, ideology, and wheeling and dealing, even in the rough-and-tumble world of Washington lobbying.

The lobbyist's travails are causing heartburn for some of his conservative allies, including DeLay, and perhaps the Bush campaign. When asked about Abramoff's troubles, DeLay distanced himself, telling reporters, "If anybody is trading on my name to get clients or to make money, that is wrong and they should stop it immediately."

One reason for the touchiness is that the controversy has also ensnared Michael Scanlon, a former aide to DeLay who worked with Abramoff at Greenberg Traurig before setting up his own grassroots firm, Capital Campaign Strategies. Abramoff had recommended Scanlon's company to the tribes, and together, over a three-year period, Greenberg Traurig and Scanlon charged the four tribes some $46 million, two-thirds of which went to Scanlon's firm, according to The Post.

Abramoff also urged the tribes to contribute to conservative groups that appeared to have little relevance to Indian issues. One example was an obscure organization that Scanlon formed in 2001, called the American International Center. Listed at a Scanlon-owned property address in Rehoboth Beach, Del., the center, which appears to be defunct, has billed itself on its Web site as an "international think tank." The Coushatta tribe donated $566,000 to the center.

Meanwhile, the FBI reportedly has been interviewing tribal members in Michigan and Louisiana about possible spending irregularities involving the work done by Abramoff and Scanlon. One issue, according to news reports, is whether funds were improperly used to help elect a tribal council in Michigan.

For its part, Greenberg Traurig has said that some of Abramoff's "personal transactions and related conduct" were "unacceptable to the firm." The law and lobbying giant has hired Henry Schuelke III of the law firm Janis Schuelke & Wechsler to conduct an inquiry and has said that after the investigation, Greenberg Traurig could take "additional action that may be appropriate."

Abramoff has said he is dismayed at the way Greenberg Traurig characterized his departure, calling it "regrettable." And he has said his resignation from the firm was based on "our mutual decision to ensure that recent events did not interfere with the representation of our clients." In a telephone interview, he added: "I think any objective analysis of the work we did couldn't but reach the conclusion that our work was immensely beneficial" for the Indian clients.

But the current probes aren't Abramoff's only headaches. He is involved in ongoing litigation in Florida over a 2000 deal to buy SunCruz Casinos, a floating gambling operation. A federal judge has ruled that Abramoff and a partner never actually made the $23 million down payment on the $147 million purchase of SunCruz.

In addition, National Journal has learned that in order to avoid public disclosure, an anonymous Malaysian client of Abramoff's in 2001 and 2002 used Scanlon's American International Center as a conduit for paying fees to Greenberg Traurig, according to several sources. The work included setting up meetings and a luncheon on Capitol Hill for the prime minister of Malaysia, and arranging a trip to Kuala Lumpur in January 2002 for two members of Congress and two Greenberg partners.

In another instance, sources said, despite federal restrictions against providing services to a country under economic sanctions by the United States, Abramoff tried to do a deal in late 2001 or early 2002 with the Sudanese ambassador to Washington. Meeting at the Washington Redskins' FedEx Field, the lobbyist and the ambassador discussed a proposal for Greenberg Traurig to represent Sudan in Washington. The deal was never sealed, but sources said that Abramoff tried to convince the ambassador that he could help quash attacks by the Christian Coalition and other evangelical groups that were accusing Sudan of religious persecution.

In an interview, Sudanese Ambassador Khidir Ahmed said he recalled that the meeting with Abramoff was "very casual," and that he didn't pay much attention, because there was little chance that any deal would pass muster with the federal government. "I don't want to get people in trouble with the American legal system," he said.

</td></tr></tbody></table>

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<a href="http://www.nndb.com/group/483/000138069/">http://www.nndb.com/group/483/000138069/</a>

<table><tbody><tr class=" odd"><td><a href="/people/646/000094364/">Jack Abramoff</a></td><td>

<center>Government</center>

</td><td align="right"><tt>28-Feb-1958</tt></td><td align="right"> </td><td>Lobbyist, incarcerated</td></tr><tr class=" even"><td><a href="/people/111/000026033/">Tom DeLay</a></td><td>

<center>Politician</center>

</td><td align="right"><tt>8-Apr-1947</tt></td><td align="right"> </td><td>Indicted ex-House Majority Leader</td></tr><tr class=" odd"><td><a href="/people/238/000073019/">Ken Mehlman</a></td><td>

<center>Government</center>

</td><td align="right"><tt>21-Aug-1966</tt></td><td align="right"> </td><td>RNC chairman 2005-07</td></tr><tr class=" even"><td><a href="/people/076/000039956/">Bob Ney</a></td><td>

<center>Politician</center>

</td><td align="right"><tt>5-Jul-1954</tt></td><td align="right"> </td><td>Congressman from Ohio, 1995-2006</td></tr><tr class=" odd"><td><a href="/people/482/000049335/">Grover Norquist</a></td><td>

<center>Activist</center>

</td><td align="right"><tt>19-Oct-1956</tt></td><td align="right"> </td><td>Washington lobbyist, anti-tax crusader</td></tr><tr class=" even"><td><a href="/people/125/000119765/">Susan Ralston</a></td><td>

<center>Government</center>

</td><td align="right"><tt>15-Oct-1967</tt></td><td align="right"> </td><td>Former Abramoff, Rove aide</td></tr><tr class=" odd"><td><a href="/people/283/000046145/">Ralph Reed</a></td><td>

<center>Activist</center>

</td><td align="right"><tt>24-Jun-1961</tt></td><td align="right"> </td><td>Former head of the Christian Coalition</td></tr><tr class=" even"><td><a href="/people/266/000171750/">Amy Ridenour</a></td><td>

<center>Activist</center>

</td><td align="right"><tt>1959</tt></td><td align="right"> </td><td>National Center for Public Policy Research</td></tr><tr class=" odd"><td><a href="/people/056/000111720/">David Safavian</a></td><td>

<center>Government</center>

</td><td align="right"><tt>c. 1967</tt></td><td align="right"> </td><td>Former OMB administrator</td></tr></tbody></table>

=

citizens for america <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_for_America">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_for_America</a>

iran contra?

Funding: Lehrman and Hume were able to attract major rightwing funders such as Joseph Coors and Ivan Boesky. Many backers of CFA come from the Fortune 500, including the heads of such corporations as Atlantic-Richfield, Shell Oil, Chase Manhattan, Dr. Pepper, W. R. Grace, Amway, and Northrup. (16) Ultra rightwing Texas billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt, Texas financier T. Boone Pickens, and Reagan "kitchen cabinet" members Holmes Tuttle and Earle Jorgensen have also contributed to CFA. (19) The J. E. and L. E. Mabee Fdn donated $20,000 in 1985, and in 1986 the Starr Fdn donated $50,000. (9,10) CFA's 1986 budget was $1. 8 million. (16)

...

CFA has been listed among the DC-based political lobbies that provided "private" aid to the contras. (11)

CFA produced slick anticommunist publications targeting the Sandinista government which were distributed to interested audiences along with materials of the State Department, the Defense Department, Heritage Foundation, and the Senate Republican Policy Committee. The group also sponsored a major public relations campaign for the Nicaraguan contras, including a 1985 national tour of contra leaders to 200 congressional districts and a barrage of pro-contra aid radio and newspaper ads in 1986. (16,23) CFA worked closely with Oliver North in North's contra supply efforts."Abramoff and CFA were assigned responsibility for organizing briefings by contra speakers, telephone-trees 'to targeted congressional offices encouraging them to vote for aid to the freedom fighters in Nicaragua'." (Interior quotes are from a declassified "NSC Intelligence Document," Exhibit OLN-217). (24)

...

The Washington Post reported that Oliver North has been very close to Jack Abramoff and the CFA. North helped CFA select the contra leaders for the 1985 speaking tour. (25)

Louis "Woody" Jenkins was a Louisiana State Representative. (33)

President Reagan also hosted the top contributors to the CFA at the White House, having a picture made with each guest. (8)

...

Jack Abramoff, former executive director of CFA, is the founder and former chairman of the International Freedom Foundation, an aggressive rightwing think tank. (24) Abramoff served as the chairman of the College Republican National Committee from 1981 to 1985 and in 1982 became the executive director of the political action committee of the Conservative Caucus--a position he still held as of early 1990. Abramoff also served as chairman of the United Students of America, a rightist student group based at the conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. (24)

CFA was an active participant in the 1986 Conservative Political Action Committee, a group whose membership was a who's who of the far right. (26)

<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-06-abramoff-bush_x.htm">http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/articles/display/Citizens_for_America</a>

<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-06-abramoff-bush_x.htm">http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-06-abramoff-bush_x.htm</a>

WASHINGTON (AP) In President Bush's first 10 months, GOP fundraiser Jack Abramoff and his lobbying team logged nearly 200 contacts with the new administration as they pressed for friendly hires at federal agencies and sought to keep the Northern Mariana Islands exempt from the minimum wage and other laws, records show.

</div>

<table class="sidebar" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td colspan="4"><img src="file:///C:/DATAleno/BRAINS/webodec3_brain/Files/291DDE4A-3782-1CDC-969F-D41E521E6578/PersonalBrain Notes/copiedlocalimagefile7.gif" alt="" border="0" height="20" width="1" /></td></tr><tr><td rowspan="2"> </td><td rowspan="2"><img src="file:///C:/DATAleno/BRAINS/webodec3_brain/Files/291DDE4A-3782-1CDC-969F-D41E521E6578/PersonalBrain Notes/copiedlocalimagefile8.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" width="10" /></td><td class="sidebar" valign="top" width="75">Abramoff remains under investigation for some of his lobbying work.</td><td rowspan="2"><img src="file:///C:/DATAleno/BRAINS/webodec3_brain/Files/291DDE4A-3782-1CDC-969F-D41E521E6578/PersonalBrain Notes/copiedlocalimagefile9.gif" alt="" border="0" height="1" width="10" /></td></tr><tr><td valign="bottom" align="left">

</td></tr></tbody></table>

The meetings between Abramoff's lobbying team and the administration ranged from Attorney General John Ashcroft to policy advisers in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, according to his lobbying firm billing records.

Abramoff, a $100,000-plus fundraiser for Bush, is now under criminal investigation for some of his lobbying work. His firm boasted its lobbying team helped revise a section of the Republican Party's 2000 platform to make it favorable to its island client.

In addition, two of Abramoff's lobbying colleagues on the Marianas won political appointments inside federal agencies.

"Our standing with the new administration promises to be solid as several friends of the CNMI (islands) will soon be taking high-ranking positions in the Administration, including within the Interior Department," Abramoff wrote in a January 2001 letter in which he persuaded the island government to follow him as a client to his new lobbying firm, Greenberg Traurig.

The reception Abramoff's team received from the Bush administration was in stark contrast to the chilly relations of the Clinton years. Abramoff, then at the Preston Gates firm, scored few meetings with Clinton aides and the lobbyist and the islands vehemently opposed White House attempts to extend U.S. labor laws to the territory's clothing factories.

The records from Abramoff's firm, obtained by The Associated Press from the Marianas under an open records request, chronicle Abramoff's careful cultivation of relations with Bush's political team as far back as 1997.

In that year, Abramoff charged the Marianas for getting then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush to write a letter expressing support for the Pacific territory's school choice proposal, his billing records show.

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wiki

<ul>

<li><a title="Jack Abramoff" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff">Jack Abramoff</a> Scandal, (R) lobbyist found guilty of conspiracy, tax evasion and corruption of public officials in three different courts in a wide ranging investigation. Currently serving 70 months and fined $24.7 million. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_politicians_convicted_of_crimes#cite_note-12">[13]</a> See Scandals, Executive Branch. The following were also implicated:</li>

</ul>

<ol>

<li><a class="mw-redirect" title="James W. Ellis" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Ellis">James W. Ellis</a> (R) ran Tom DeLay's (R-<a title="Texas" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas">Texas</a>) PAC, indicted</li>

<li><a class="new" title="John D. Calyandro (page does not exist)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_D._Calyandro&action=edit&redlink=1">John D. Calyandro</a> (R) runs Texans for a Republican Majority, indicted</li>

<li><a class="new" title="Adam Kidon (page does not exist)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adam_Kidon&action=edit&redlink=1">Adam Kidon</a> business partner of Abramoff, pleaded guilty to fraud, sentenced to 70 months</li>

<li><a title="Michael Scanlon" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scanlon">Michael Scanlon</a> (R) former staff to Tom DeLay: while working for Abramoff, pleaded guilty to bribery (grassroots consultant?]</li>

<li><a title="Tony Rudy" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Rudy">Tony Rudy</a> (R) former staff to Tom DeLay, pleaded guilty to conspiracy</li>

<li><a class="mw-redirect" title="Robert Ney" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ney">Robert Ney</a> (R-<a title="Ohio" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio">Ohio</a>) bribed by Abramoff, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, sentenced to 30 months.</li>

<li><a title="Neil Volz" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Volz">Neil Volz</a> (R) former staff to Robert Ney, pleaded guilty to conspiracy</li>

<li><a title="William Heaton" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Heaton">William Heaton</a> (R) former staff to Robert Ney, pleaded guilty to fraud, 24 months probation</li>

<li><a title="John Albaugh" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Albaugh">John Albaugh</a> (R) former COS to Ernest Istook (R-OK) pled guilty</li>

<li><a title="Robert E. Coughlin" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Coughlin">Robert E. Coughlin</a> (R) Deputy Chief of Staff, Criminal Division, Justice Department, pled guilty to accepting bribes. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_politicians_convicted_of_crimes#cite_note-13">[14]</a></li>

</ol>

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He was <a target="blank" href="http://www.okiefunk.com/node/10">implicated in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal</a>. Along with taking thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Abramoff's firm, Istook used Abramoff's sky boxes at Fed Ex Field during a Washington Redskins game for a fundraiser. Documents from one of the Abramoff-related prosecutions showed that Istook returned the favor by asking Abramoff what his clients would like to see in an upcoming transportation bill, a move that had Abramoff directing his staff to come up with a "Christmas list" of pork-barrel spending. Istook's chief of staff <a target="blank" href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,361781,00.html">ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges</a> for taking perks from lobbyists in exchange for official favors in a case related to the whole mess. It's hard to see how this sort of stuff would endear Istook to the tea partiers.

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<h1 class="title">Abramoff's Favorite Think Tank Schools Tea Partiers on Health Care</h1>

</div>

Ã¢ÂÂ By <a class="active" href="http://motherjones.com/authors/stephanie-mencimer">Stephanie Mencimer</a>

</div>

On Tuesday, tea partiers and other activists who came to Capitol Hill to protest the health care bill were armed with the usual array of signs demanding that Congress "Kill the Bill," comparing Obamacare to socialism and the usual rhetoric. But many of them were also toting a slick, hefty tome called, "<a href="http://www.nationalcenter.org/ShatteredLives.html">Shattered Lives: 100 Victims of Government Health Care"</a> that was being distributed at the rallies by the National Center for Public Policy Research. The report features an introduction by talk show host Mark Levin, the author of Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, and is essentially a compilation of media health care horror stories--everywhere but in the U.S., which, of course, could provide tomes worth of material about the failures of the private health care system.

The "Shattered Lives" stories come from Great Britain, Japan, Russia and South Africa, and read together, they do offer up some pretty horrible details about national health care. There's the British six-year-old whose brain tumor went undiagnosed for years because the National Health Service insisted in giving him painkillers for his headaches but not a brain scan. There's one about the guy who ended up pulling his own tooth with a rusty pair of plyers because he couldn't find a dentist.

��

It's a gripping read, and the production values suggest that someone put up a big chunk of money to produce and distribute it to tea party activists far and wide. (Rally participants on Tuesday got free bound copies that cost $14.95 on Amazon.) There's reason to be suspicious. After all, NCPPR isn't just any public policy group. You might recall that not only has it done stealth research for tobacco companies, but it was also one of the nonprofit groups <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/12/AR2006101200889.html">accused of helping the disgraced uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff</a> pimp his clients in exchange for big donations. The report doesn't say who paid for the work, but it has all the hallmarks of the usual corporate suspects.

</div>

<a href="http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/03/bringing-out-big-guns-kill-health-care">http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/03/bringing-out-big-guns-kill-health-care</a>

Like Roger Stone, Jack Abramoff was into pumping iron. Unlike him, however, he lived the puritanical life of an orthodox Jew, a faith he adopted as a high school after seeing Ã¢ÂÂFiddler on the RoofÃ¢ÂÂ and as a kind of rebellion against his secular parents.

Once he started college, Abramoff became an avid Republican this time as an act of rebellion against the left. In no time at all, he became head of the Young Republicans national organization and a major player in rightwing causes. One of his early partners in the Young Republicans was Grover Nordquist who would become a powerful opponent of an equitable tax system. He also got close to Ralph Reed, another emerging rightwing shit-bag.

These characters adopted the surface style of the New Left but for rightwing causes. They loved to burn leftist enemies of the U.S. effigy and stage publicity stunts of the sort that Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin pioneered. Not long after graduating college, Abramoff organized a kind of counter-revolutionary convention in Angola that had Jihadists from Afghanistan, Nicaraguan contras and SavimbiÃ¢ÂÂ��s UNITA in attendance.

Growing up in Beverly Hills, Abramoff became a film buff. This would lead him to produce a movie called Ã¢ÂÂ��Red ScorpionÃ¢ÂÂ in 1989 that was close in spirit to the sort of Reaganite junk being turned out by Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Norris. It stars Dolph Lundgren as a KGB operative who becomes converted to the anti-Communist guerrilla movement led by a Savimbi type figure. The NY TimesÃ¢ÂÂs Stephen Holden <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=950DE4D7143EF932A15757C0A96F948260&partner=Rotten%20Tomatoes">summed up the movie</a> this way:

As directed by Joseph Zito, Ã¢ÂÂRed ScorpionÃ¢ÂÂ has the logic and pace of an adventure comic. The moment the going gets slow, a helicopter or a tank appears to blow everything in sight to smithereens, often to the musical accompaniment of Little Richard hits. The movieÃ¢ÂÂs reflective moments belong to Mr. LundgrenÃ¢ÂÂs sweaty chest.

Using connections made in the Young Republicans, Abramoff launched a career as a super-lobbyist with particularly close ties to the awful Tom DeLay. Work with two of his clients is examined in grizzly detail in GibneyÃ¢ÂÂs first-rate film.

Abramoff was the Ã¢ÂÂgo toÃ¢ÂÂ man in Washington for the mostly Chinese sweatshop owners in Saipan, an island in the Northern Marianas, an American Commonwealth. East Asian workers were recruited for jobs that paid below the minimum wage while the commonwealth status allowed the label to say Ã¢ÂÂMade in the USAÃ¢ÂÂ. Workers were charged exorbitant sums to get the jobs and often had to work for months without pay in order to meet their debts, a status close to slavery. Women who sought to get off the treadmill often took jobs as prostitutes just so they could get the money to return home. Abramoff took delegations of mostly Republican politicians to Saipan to give their stamp of approval while they stayed at a 5 star hotel and played golf.

In another filthy operation that would eventually land him in prison and lose Tom DeLay his cushy job in Washington, Abramoff became a lobbyist for Indian tribes with gambling casinos, hence the name of the movie. They got some favors from the politicians, but of negligible value to the Indians at the grass roots levels. All of their millions went to line the coffers of politicians like DeLay, to support the life-style of Abramoff and his partners in crime, and to various rightwing causes inimical to Indian interests. All the while Abramoff was writing email to his cohorts describing his clients as Ã¢ÂÂmoronsÃ¢ÂÂ and Ã¢ÂÂmonkeysÃ¢ÂÂ.

Abramoff served 3 ÃÂ½ years of a six-year sentence and is now living in a halfway house in Baltimore where he has a job paying $7.50 per hour at a kosher pizzeria. He is one of the most evil people that has been churned up in the 25 year period of reaction we are enduring and Alex GibneyÃ¢ÂÂs documentary reveals every wart on the toad.

<a href="http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/client-9-the-rise-and-fall-of-elliot-spitzer-casino-jack/">http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/client-9-the-rise-and-fall-of-elliot-spitzer-casino-jack/</a>

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Franken Truth?

saipan sweatshops; abramoff made red scorpion in S Africa apartheid 161  JA close to R reed, grover and TD

workers locked up, rape forced abortions ��CA Miller had hearings

Frank Murkowski (gop) got his fix shot down

JA paid for 120K gold trip for TDelay?

scanlon ran war rooom for TD on clinton impeachment

JA paid reed to get rid of rival casino (then went to them to shake down to fix?) 171

GN laundered $ for reed thru Ams for Tax Reform (bipart=date-rape"

ney snuck stuff into bill

astro: united Srs assoc (JA)  aka USANext hired same pr guys who did swift boat to pvt SS 206

McCain hearning grosh lifeguard;

There were phony grass-roots Christian groups. Phony billing statements. Nonprofits with phony purposes. And, perhaps phoniest of all, a "premiere international think tank" called the American International Center, directed by two boyhood friends of Abramoff partner Michael Scanlon: yoga instructor Brian Mann and lifeguard-cum-excavator David Grosh. Mann refused to answer questions, but Grosh, who never consulted a lawyer, was happy to tell his story.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/22/AR2005062202100.html

==

<a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/07/08/225519/-Jack-Abramoff-meets-with-Dick-Cheney-s-staff">http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/07/08/225519/-Jack-Abramoff-meets-with-Dick-Cheney-s-staff</a>

I love the Friday night document dump.

As <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/7/19327/75238" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">mcjoan mentioned on the Front Page</a> Jack Abramoff has been at the White House more than two times. The Secret Service has sent <a href="http://www.judicialwatch.org/abramoff-july7.shtml" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Judicial Watch</a> more WH logs that record another seven visits.

I am sure that there were more, but that's for another day.

The <a href="http://judicialwatch.org/archive/2006/abramoff-docs-july7.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">pdf logs</a> are hard to read. They are provided with zero context and are cut apart across several pages. And yet, they tell an interesting story. They provide enough details to connect Jack Abramoff to the staff of VP Dick Cheney, as well as other offices in the Bush WH.

These documents raise questions that need more research and answers.

Join me on the jump to start the hunt...

<div id="body" class="article-body" style=" margin: 15px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; overflow: hidden;">Before we begin, it is good to check in with Jack Abramoff and what he told <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/pdf/pressroom/advance_Abramoff.pdf" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Vanity Fair (pdf)</a> about his relationship with the GOP power structure in Washington DC:

<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(246, 243, 236); margin: 1.2em 0px; padding: 20px; line-height: 1.4; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(226, 226, 225); border-top: 1px solid rgb(226, 226, 225);">"Any important Republican who comes out and says they didn't know me is almost certainly lying," he says. Such lies are not just, well, lies, but dumb to boot, he adds, for, as his own humiliations suggest, old e-mails never die; they just sit on hard drives, waiting to be subpoenaed and then to be leaked to the press. "This is not an age when you can run away from facts," he declares. "I had to deal with my records, and others will have to deal with theirs."</blockquote>

One of the amazing things about following the Abramoff scandal since 1999 is all of his close GOP pals, who suddenly do not remember who he is.

They are lying.

The lies and denials run the gamut, from absolute disassociation to Jack was a remote acquaintance to he was an old pal who made bad choices.

In light of the June 25 Indian Affairs <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/6/25/1275/80239" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">document dump</a> and other recent news the denials are coming fast and furious.

<a href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/cats/ralph_reed/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Reed</a>, <a href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/cats/grover_norquist/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Norquist</a>, <a href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/cats/bob_ney/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Ney</a>, <a href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/cats/john_doolittle/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Doolittle</a>, <a href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001052.php" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Ashcroft</a>, <a href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001021.php" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Stillwell</a>, <a href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/000981.php" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Griles</a>, <a href="http://www.forward.com/articles/8064" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Mehlman</a> and a host of others have been trying to move themselves as far away from Abramoff as they can.

It won't work.

<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(246, 243, 236); margin: 1.2em 0px; padding: 20px; line-height: 1.4; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(226, 226, 225); border-top: 1px solid rgb(226, 226, 225);">"Any important Republican who comes out and says they didn't know me is almost certainly lying"</blockquote>

That would include George W. Bush and his administration. And it includes the power behind the boy king, Dick Cheney.

The date, the time, the office and who Abramoff was visiting are included as fragments in the newly released Secret Service logs. Some also included how many people were in the group. Some fragments only indicate that Abramoff "might" have been there.

Already the press is starting to sift through the bits and pieces. The <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060708/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_abramoff" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">AP</a> finds the obvious link to Dick Cheney in the documents:

<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(246, 243, 236); margin: 1.2em 0px; padding: 20px; line-height: 1.4; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(226, 226, 225); border-top: 1px solid rgb(226, 226, 225);">One Abramoff White House visit, according to Secret Service logs, was on April 20, 2001, to see Cesar Conda, at the time Cheney's assistant for domestic policy.

Five days after the Conda meeting, one of Abramoff's former lobbying colleagues, Patrick Pizzella, was nominated by the president as assistant secretary of labor. The Secret Service logs do not state why Abramoff met with Conda.

</blockquote>

Another possible reason is Cheney's secret Energy Task force. <a href="http://www.nrdc.org/air/energy/taskforce/tfinx.asp" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">The NRDC</a> has posted hundreds of searchable documents related the secret meetings and Conda <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2004-20%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=site%3Awww.nrdc.org+Cesar+Conda&btnG=Search" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">is in the loop</a> for the meetings.

Jack would have wanted to get a piece of that action, as the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/28/AR2005122801588.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">WP reported last December</a>(emphasis added):

<blockquote style=" background-color: rgb(246, 243, 236); margin: 1.2em 0px; padding: 20px; line-height: 1.4; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-color: rgb(226, 226, 225); border-bottom-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(226, 226, 225); border-top-style: solid;">Another Abramoff financial vehicle was the nonprofit American International Center, a Rehoboth Beach, Del., "think tank" set up by Scanlon, who staffed it with beach friends from his summer job as a lifeguard. The center became a means for Abramoff and Scanlon to take money from foreign clients that they did not want to officially represent. Some of the funds came from the government of Malaysia. Banks and oil companies there were making deals in Sudan, where U.S. companies were barred on human rights grounds. Sudan was among several oil-rich nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East that Abramoff eyed as venues for lucrative energy deals. Abramoff told associates he wanted to become a go-to person for U.S. companies seeking to do business with oil-patch nations.</blockquote>

The more this scandal develops, the more impressive the reporting of Susan Schmidt and James Grimaldi becomes. Their December article is loaded with scandal foreshadowing. And<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/07/AR2006070701317.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">they have taken a look</a> at the newly released White House logs:

<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(246, 243, 236); margin: 1.2em 0px; padding: 20px; line-height: 1.4; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(226, 226, 225); border-top: 1px solid rgb(226, 226, 225);">The appointments included a meeting with a domestic policy aide to Vice President Cheney and a meeting in the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives attended by about 40 people. The logs also reflect that Abramoff attended one or more social events, as well as a gathering of Indian tribal officials and state legislators at which President Bush appeared. [snip]

In one of the previously disclosed visits -- March 6, 2001 -- Abramoff met with presidential adviser Karl Rove in an unsuccessful effort to have two allies placed in Interior Department jobs. [snip]

Among those with whom Abramoff met in the spring of 2001 was Cesar Conda, then assistant to the vice president for domestic policy, and Catharine Ryun, executive assistant to the director of the faith-based office and daughter of Rep. Jim Ryun (R-Kan.).

The purpose of a March 1, 2001, appointment from 4 to 6 p.m. could not be determined from the logs.

</blockquote>

Now Conda is a lobbyist (of course) and he hardly remembers why Jack was there (of course).

There are some other possible connections through the rooms used in the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB) for some of the meetings. These may be all purpose meeting rooms or assigned offices. Room 276 is interesting. Back when Clinton was President it was Al Gore's office.

Back at the time of these Abramoff meetings, room 276 seemed to be connected to another member of the Cheney Team, <a href="http://www.gcn.com/online/vol1_no1/17662-1.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Nancy Dorn</a>, she was Cheney's legislative affairs assistant. Now she is <a href="http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0503/052803nj1.htm" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">a lobbyist for GE</a> and in between she was the number two person at Bush's OMB.  A search of the NRDC documents includes many mentions of meetings in Room 276 connected with Nancy Dorn. In these records the "Faith Based" meeting with the Congressman's daughter took place in room 276.

As I've mentioned before, Jack's visits to the White House more than likely had to do with the <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/tag/Office%20of%20Strategic%20Initiatives" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI)</a>. And the bulk of Abramoff's contacts were most likely done via email and phone/video conferencing.

And according to the invoices Jack sent to the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) the released meetings between Jack and the White House are incomplete. Take this entry from June 19, 2001:

<blockquote style="background-color: rgb(246, 243, 236); margin: 1.2em 0px; padding: 20px; line-height: 1.4; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(226, 226, 225); border-top: 1px solid rgb(226, 226, 225);">06/19/01    Jack Abramoff

Meet with Bush Administration policy advisors regarding client issues.</blockquote>

I would guess that meetinng took Jack into Rove's OSI.

And the CNMI invoices offer some more insight: Team Abramoff's point man for the White House was Tony Rudy.

The admitted felon was billing CNMI for meetings with the White House almost every week. Other Team members get meeting as well. And these are only the records for one of Jack's clients for 2001. I suspect there were many meetings.

(I'm sure that this was part of the information suppressed by John McCain when he picked which documents the Indian Affairs Committee would release to the public. I find it odd that not a single page of Abramoff invoices to the Tribes was included, but I digress)

Last Friday, the Bush Administration proved (once again) that, like the GOP Congress and Senate, they are incapable of investigating themselves. That was clear when Bush's DOJ Inspector General released a whitewashing report of Abramoff's influence on Guam.

To refute the report, I posted <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/7/4/02258/64011" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">an Oct. 10, 2001 e-mail from Abramoff</a> that shows the overwhelming need for an independent prosecutor to investigate Jack Abramoff and all things connected to this scandal. Without such an appointment the Bush team may be able to run out the clock and Justice will be denied.

And Justice is long overdue, especially for the women who have been moved through a GOP protected system of sexual abuse, forced abortions, force prostitution and cruelty for the last twelve years.

We have to end this abuse that continues to this day, under our flag on the Mariana Islands.

Abramoff was a 25-year bag man for the GOP. For him and his pals, the suffering and abuse was OK because it helped the GOP take power.

We can not allow this to go on.

We need to keep the focus of the Abramoff scandal on what it is: a GOP sex scandal.

One great way to help drive that focus is to support H.R. 5550, <a href="http://www.house.gov/georgemiller/newmarianas.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">the Human Dignity Act</a>.

The Bill would extend US labor, immigration and custom laws to the rogue US Territory: the Commonwealth of North Mariana Islands (CNMI). This is the legislation Abramoff, DeLay and the GOP have blocked for more than a decade. Justice is long overdue.

So far there ONLY 24 Members of Congress joining with George Miller as Co-Sponsors of this Bill. They are all Democrats.

EVERY Democrat should be a sponsor. We need to get on the phone, send out emails, letters and demand that every Democrat becomes a co-sponsor. And we need to apply the pressure to every member of the GOP caucus.

We need to make this an issue for every House race in 2006. The more we talk about it the less likely it is that the Bush political appointees will be able to sweep the Abramoff/DeLay abuse investigation under the rug (once again).

Every member of the GOP Caucus who worked to block legislation extending US labor, immigration and custom laws to CNMI should be put on the defensive. The crimes were real and the evidence has been presented to Congress since before 1994. And the abuse<a href="http://www.islandsbusiness.com/islands_business/index_dynamic/containerNameToReplace=MiddleMiddle/focusModuleID=5800/overideSkinName=issueArticle-full.tpl" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold;">continues to this very day</a>. It is time to hold these folks accountable: both as co-conspirators and at the ballot box.

2006 is now.

Let's do this.

</div>

<h4 style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.1; font-weight: normal; text-transform: uppercase; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ORIGINALLY POSTED TO <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/blog/dengre/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; text-decoration: none;">DENGRE</a> ON FRI JUL 07, 2006 AT 10:41 PM PDT.</h4>

</div>

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<h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading">Jack Abramoff: Tyco</h1>

In "a written statement," <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Timothy_E.Flanigan" title="Timothy E. Flanigan">Timothy E. Flanigan</a>, when nominated by President <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=George_W.Bush" title="George W. Bush" class="mw-redirect">George W. Bush</a> to be Deputy Attorney General of the United States, said that "<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Republican_Party" title="Republican Party" class="mw-redirect">Republican</a> <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Lobbyist" title="Lobbyist">lobbyist</a> <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff" title="Jack Abramoff">Jack Abramoff</a> bragged two years ago that he was in contact with White House political aide <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Karl_Rove" title="Karl Rove">Karl Rove</a> on behalf of a large, Bermuda-based corporation that wanted to avoid incurring some taxes and continue receiving federal contracts," R. Jeffrey Smith <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/22/AR2005092202204.html" class="external text" title="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/22/AR2005092202204.html" rel="nofollow">wrote</a> in the September 23, 2005, Washington Post.

"To review the highlights of our story," Josh Marshall <a href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006629" class="external text" title="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006629" rel="nofollow">wrote</a> September 25, 2005, "Timothy Flanigan was appointed Deputy White House Counsel at the beginning of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bush_administration" title="Bush administration">Bush administration</a>. He later left that job to become General Counsel of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tyco_International_Ltd." title="Tyco International Ltd.">Tyco Corporation</a>, which had relocated to Bermuda to avoid paying taxes to the US Treasury. At Tyco, Flanigan hired Abramoff <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-flanigan29jul29,0,2489546.story?track=tothtml" class="external text" title="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-flanigan29jul29,0,2489546.story?track=tothtml" rel="nofollow">to fend off legislation which would have forced Tyco to pay its taxes.</a> And, in the course of that hiring and work, Abramoff first boasted of his access to [Tom] <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tom_DeLay" title="Tom DeLay" class="mw-redirect">DeLay</a>, Rove and others and then later claimed that he had spoken to Rove and enlisted his assistance on Tyco's behalf."

Marshall <a href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_18.php#006619" class="external text" title="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_18.php#006619" rel="nofollow">noted</a> September 23, 2005, that "any suggestion that Abramoff had just fooled Flanigan into believing that he had more access than he had was highly implausible since Flanigan, as <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Alberto_R._Gonzales" title="Alberto R. Gonzales">Al Gonzales</a>' deputy at the White House, would have gotten a good sense of who Abramoff was and the level of juice he had with Rove and other Republican power-brokers."

"On paper," Marshall <a href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006629" class="external text" title="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006629" rel="nofollow">said</a> September 25, 2005, "Jack Abramoff was a lobbyist. And he made a great deal of money for himself. But if you think of Jack Abramoff as just a crooked lobbyist most of the facts coming out about what he did don't make a great deal of sense. He was a key player in a very big political machine and he was managing a slush fund."

"Look at the pattern," Marshall said. "Notice how all Abramoff's clients seemed to get 'bilked' out of large sums of money that ended up going to other conservative foundations, consulting firms, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ralph_E.Reed,Jr." title="Ralph E. Reed, Jr.">Ralph Reed</a>, lobby shops, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Grover_Norquist" title="Grover Norquist">Grover Norquist</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Astroturf" title="Astroturf">astroturf</a> organizers, politicians, etc.? All of them part of Washington's Republican infrastructure?

"In the case of Abramoff's work for Flanigan and Tyco, Abramoff ended up sending the greater part of their $2 million lobbying fee to an <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Astroturf" title="Astroturf">astroturf</a> outfit called <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=GrassRoots_Interactive" title="GrassRoots Interactive">GrassRoots Interactive</a> -- an outfit allegedly controlled by Abramoff and run by a guy who now works as the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/23/AR2005092302050.html" class="external text" title="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/23/AR2005092302050.html" rel="nofollow">Deputy Chief of Staff</a> to the Governor of Maryland."

Regarding the relationship between Abramoff and Tyco, Marshall <a href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006629" class="external text" title="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006629" rel="nofollow">asked</a> whether Tyco was just another "corporation which hires a lawyer out of the White House only to get taken in by Jack Abramoff's wiles? Please. How many times can one operator pull off the same stunt? How many times do big chunks of these pay days get passed on to other operators and organizations without the operators and organizations getting wise to the game?

"These odd diversions aren't the exception but the rule," Marshall <a href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006629" class="external text" title="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006629" rel="nofollow">said</a>. "The Republican machine built by DeLay, Norquist, Abramoff, et al. and pulled into high gear after 2001, is a pay-for-play political machine. This is just another part of the operation, like the diktat for trade associations to hire only Republicans. Big political machines need their soldiers taken care of -- jobs on <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=K_Street_Project" title="K Street Project">K Street</a> which also discipline the trade associations under Hill leadership. Just so, they need big sums of money to move around off the books. How does Rove keep the millions moving to Norquist? To Reed? To all the other operatives whose names you don't know about?

"<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Abramoff-Reed_Indian_Gambling_Scandal" title="Abramoff-Reed Indian Gambling Scandal">Indian tribes bursting with millions</a> who need very focused sorts of legislative intervention -- that's one good source of money. Corrupt Pacific Island governments who need similar help -- another good source.

"If Tyco wanted help, they had to pay in. That's what the $2 million was. Of course it got passed on to some other <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=GOP" title="GOP" class="mw-redirect">GOP</a> outfit with Abramoff connections. That was the point!," Marshall <a href="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006629" class="external text" title="http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_09_25.php#006629" rel="nofollow">said</a>.

<h2>Contents</h2>

[<a class="internal" id="togglelink">hide</a>]</div>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff:_Tyco#Related_SourceWatch_Resources">1 Related SourceWatch Resources</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff:_Tyco#External_links">2 External links</a>

<ul>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff:Tyco#General_Links_and_Information.2C_Articles.26_Commentary_for_2002">2.1 General Links and Information, Articles & Commentary for 2002</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff:Tyco#Articles.26_Commentary_for_2004">2.2 Articles & Commentary for 2004</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-2"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff:Tyco#Articles.26_Commentary_for_2005">2.3 Articles & Commentary for 2005</a></li>

</ul>

</li>

</ul>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h2><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff:_Related_SourceWatch_Resources" title="Jack Abramoff: Related SourceWatch Resources">Related SourceWatch Resources</a></h2>

<h2>External links</h2>

See lengthy lists of articles related to Jack Abramoff's corruption and related scandals.

<h3><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff:_External_Links" title="Jack Abramoff: External Links">General Links and Information, Articles & Commentary for 2002</a></h3>

<h3><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff:_External_Links_2004" title="Jack Abramoff: External Links 2004">Articles & Commentary for 2004</a></h3>

<h3><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jack_Abramoff:_External_Links_2005" title="Jack Abramoff: External Links 2005">Articles & Commentary for 2005</a></h3>

<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Special:Categories" title="Special:Categories">Categories</a>: <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Category:Scandals" title="Category:Scandals">Scandals</a> | <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Category:Corruption" title="Category:Corruption">Corruption</a> | <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Category:Politics" title="Category:Politics">Politics</a> | <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Category:Politicians" title="Category:Politicians">Politicians</a>

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<table><tbody><tr><td valign="top" nowrap="nowrap" width="100">7/2/06</td><td valign="middle" align="left" width="543">JACK ABRAMOFF’S WHITE MAN’S BURDEN: How the Sleazy Republican Lobbyist Served Apartheid By Danny Schechter</td></tr><tr><td valign="top" nowrap="nowrap"> </td><td valign="top" align="left">  </td></tr><tr><td valign="top" nowrap="nowrap" width="100"> </td><td valign="top" align="left" width="543">

Mediachannel.org

Picture the scene.

It was a quiet night in June 1985 in the equatorial heat of Jamba, a small town in the heartland of Angola, the oil and diamond rich African nation that was divided by a bloody civil war for 30 years. Jamba at the time was a base for Jonas’ Savimbi’s Unita movement, a tribal secessionist movement bizarrely funded, at the same time, by Communist China and the CIA.

A top-secret meeting was then underway between Savimbi and his boosters led by a young American Republican activist, none other than Jack Abramoff. He was there representing an organization he founded, the International Freedom Foundation. Also present, a South African newspaper reports, “Leaders of the Afghan mujahedin, Nicaraguan contras, Laotian guerrillas and members of the Oliver North American right.�� (Could a Bin Laden operative have been there with the CIA- backed Afghan delegaton? There’s no evidence of that yet.) Abramoff, and others had disguised their identities. His code name was “Pacman.”

Unita’s strongman, the late Jonas Savimbi was a masterful guerilla fighter who became the darling of the American right wing as it rallied to the cause of Unita’s main ally, racist South Africa. Conservatives dubbed him a freedom fighter, heralding him as their Che Guevara. In the end 600, 000 people, mostly civilians would die in this bloody conflict, many as a result of atrocities perpetuated by Unita. I visited Angola in l986 and can personally confirm how bad it was.

Abramoff’s trip to Angola had been paid for by right-wing NY financier Lewis Lehrman as part of an effort to build a global anti-communist alliance. (Lehrman later fired Abramoff, who would go on to become the most notorious lobbyist in America, for inflating his expense reports, a portent of corrupt practices to come.)

Abramoff, an ultra-orthodox Jew recalled an incident when he left the meeting to pray in the bush. “They thought, I was a “mystic,” he would later write. There was nothing mystical about the US policies Abramoff was covertly advancing.

According to the Wikipedia, “In 1986, Savimbi was invited by U.S. President Ronald Reagan to the White House. Reagan spoke of UNITA winning “a victory that electrifies the world… Equally important, Savimbi was strongly supported by the extremely influential Heritage Foundation. Heritage Foundation foreign policy analyst Michael Johns and other conservatives visited regularly with Savimbi in his clandestine camps in southern Angola and provided the rebel leader with ongoing political and military guidance in his war against the Angolan government.

“Savimbi’s U.S.-based supporters ultimately proved successful in convincing the Central Intelligence Agency to channel covert weapons to Savimbi’s war against Angola’s Marxist government, which greatly intensified the conflict.”

This early period in Abramoff’s career has been largely ignored in most of the American media. It was the period in which he began building relations with tribal peoples that would later turn him into a very well-compensated lobbyist for American Indian tribes in the lucrative gambling industry.

His fascination with Africa would lead to a lobbying contract for the Congo’s Mobutu Seso Seko, a Savimbi supporter and then the richest and most corrupt dictator on the continent. Mobutu, critics, charged, ran a “kleptocracy” based on the violent suppression of human rights.

Abramoff never just served others. He was almost more ambitious and avaricious then that. He saw a chance to make a name and big money for himself with the help of apartheid South Africa. Rocked by uprisings in the townships and challenged by the artists who backed a cultural boycott of South Africa’s “Sun City”, the top gambling resort and entertainment venue, Apartheid’s rulers decided to fight back against the likes of activists like singer Little Steven Van Zandt by channeling state funds into media projects they could later deny they were linked with,

Jack Abramoff had actually first visited South Africa in 1983, as head of the College Republicans National Committee (CRNC). South Africa’s Mail and Guardian reported on February 10, 2006: “The IFF was officially headquartered in Washington, where the South Africans were given entrée into the American political establishment by Abramoff and the Young Republicans. But, it was effectively run from Johannesburg…Newsday reported that the Johannesburg office was “the nerve centre of IFF operations worldwide”.

Ambramoff then enlisted in South Africa’s cultural war and suddenly found himself as the head of Hollywood movie studio called Regency Enterprises. The idea was to make anti-communist films that could denigrate the anti-apartheid movement. Poof, Jack wrote a screenplay.

The movie was “Red Scorpion” starring the very Aryan-looking Dolph Lundgren. It pictured African liberation fighters as surrogates for Soviet totalitarians. The plot: “A Russian KGB agent is sent to Africa to kill an anti-Communist black revolutionary.” The tagline: “He’s a human killing machine. Taught to stalk. Trained to kill. Programmed to destroy. He’s played by their rules… Until now.” Jack Ambramoff’s alter ego and fantasy was now on the screen.

The movie was made in South African-occupied Namibia. It was denounced by Hollywood supporters of the cultural boycott like Martin Scorcese, Spike Lee and Robert DeNiro for supporting apartheid. Other critics called it “homoerotic” and overpatriotic.” He later executive produced a sequel, Red Scorpion 2.

Ambramoff has a pattern of first denying sleazy practices until forced to admit them. At first, he publicly denied South African financing. This past week the Mail & Guardian quotes one-time apartheid spy Craig Williamson as now admitting that the money came directly from the South African military:

“Among Abramoff’s South African projects was the anti-communist film Red Scorpion, made in South African-occupied Namibia and, according to Williamson, funded by the South African military.”

Why the military? The newspaper reveals: ��The IFF was ostensibly founded as a conservative think-tank, but was in reality part of an elaborate South African military intelligence operation, code-named Operation Babushka. Established to combat sanctions and undermine the African National Congress, it also supported Jonas Savimbi and his rebel Angolan movement, Unita.”

The movie was modeled romantically on Savimbi’s “War for Freedom” but also riddled with stereotypes and propaganda, Sample exchange: “Colonel Zayas: Are you out of your mind? Lt. Nikolai: No. Just out of bullets. [Burps].”

Abramoff turned to his connections and got a soviet-made WWII-era T-34 tank with a 76mm canon for in the final battle sequence.

An amateur reviewer posted an insightful comment on a film website which may have foreseen the off-screen drama that Ambramoff himself is now starring in. “Looking beyond the mindless action scenes (which, despite the countless guns and explosions), there is a good fable about the possibility of manipulating truth, and how appearance is not always truth.”

Another citizen-reviewer noted” Yes, the same man who bribed over 60 congressmen and senators, robbed several native American tribes blind, tried to take out life insurance policies on tribal elders with himself as the beneficiary, and called the Choctaw tribal council “Monkeys” and “troglodytes,”had an interesting earlier career.

“He was disqualified from the student government election in his Beverly Hills elementary school for exceeding spending limits. He took over the young Republican movement in college with his schoolmates including Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition, and longtime republican insider Grover Norquist.”

Last week, pictures of Abramoff and President Bush, photos whose existence was first denied by the White House, turned up on the internet. Yes, they knew each other and met several times.

Still to come are images of Abramoff on his African “liberation” safari taking up the white man’s burden in the name of discrediting Nelson Mandela. The African National Congress leader’s freedom was demanded by millions at the time, with the exception of then Congressman Dick Cheney who voted against a Congressional resolution calling for his release from prison. (Cheney also opposed overturning Ronald Reagan’s ban on sanctions against South Africa, a ban Jack Ambramoff worked to support.)

Quietly backing racist South Africa was high on the Republican agenda then, a fact that the media mostly ignores.

There must be a photo somewhere of young Jack with South Africa’s apartheid-era President, P.W. “The Crocodile” Botha.” Putting those two presidential trophy shots side by side, Botha on one side, Bush on the other, will complete this connection between the ongoing fight for truth and racial justice and the Bush Administration’s commitment to benefit “just us.” “News Dissector” Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org. He was the Executive Producer of the anti-apartheid TV series “South Africa Now” and helped produce the Sun City album with 54 top musicians.

</td></tr></tbody></table>

</div>

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<h1 class="asset-name" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 26px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Beyond Tom DeLay: J.D. Hayworth, Roy Blunt, Others Reaped Financial Rewards From Disgraced Lobbyist Jack Abramoff</h1>

<div class="asset-meta" style=" margin: 0.25em 0px 0px; padding: 2px 0px 0.3em; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">by <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/about/staff.php#wilson" style="outline: none;">Megan R. Wilson</a> on August 17, 2010 1:45 PM </div>

<div class="asset-meta" style=" margin: 0.25em 0px 0px; padding: 2px 0px 0.3em; line-height: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/08/beyond-tom-delay-abramoff.html">http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/08/beyond-tom-delay-abramoff.html</a></div>

<div style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The U.S. Department of Justice <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41104.html" target="_blank" style="outline: none;">ended a six-year investigation</a> into former House Majority Leader <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cycle=Career&type=I&cid=N00005892&newMem=N" style="outline: none;">Tom DeLay</a> (R-Texas), clearing "the Hammer" of any federal corruption charges for his ties to now-disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

</div>

<div style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Meanwhile, Sen. <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00006424&cycle=2010" style="outline: none;">John McCain</a> (R-Ariz.) recently <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/JohnMcCaindotcom#p/u/8/Xh__3UYriKY" target="blank" style="outline: none;">launched a new ad</a> linking his right-wing<a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/races/summary.php?id=AZS1&cycle=2010" style="outline: none;">primary challenger</a>, former Arizona Republican Rep. <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00006455&cycle=Career" style="outline: none;">J.D. Hayworth</a>, to Abramoff. And Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Robin Carnahan <a href="http://www.robincarnahan.com/blog/post/senator_john_mccain_attacks_the_way_congressman_blunt_does_business_in/" target="blank" style="outline: none;">used McCain’s attacks</a> as a renewed opportunity to hit her Republican opponent <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00005195&cycle=2010" style="outline: none;">Roy Blunt</a> for his ties to the lobbyist-turned-convicted-felon. </div>

</div>

<div style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Hayworth and Blunt are not the only active politicians to have accepted donations from the tainted lobbyist. In all, 37 current congressional candidates and sitting members of Congress received money from Abramoff, according to a review of campaign finance data by the <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/" style="outline: none;">Center for Responsive Politics</a>.</div>

</div>

<div style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Abramoff, along with his wife, Pamela, personally contributed more than $301,400 to federal candidates, parties and committees between the 1992 and 2004 election cycles, according to the Center’s research. </div>

</div>

<div style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Of this sum, 92 percent went to Republican politicians, while 8 percent went to nonpartisan political action committees and interest groups, including the gun-rights organization <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00305532&cycle=2006" style="outline: none;">Arena PAC</a>, the <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00332296" style="outline: none;">Susan B. Anthony List</a> committee that opposes abortion rights and the PAC of his then-employer, <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00213173" style="outline: none;">Preston Gates & Ellis</a>. The lobby shop in 2007 merged with another firm to become K&L Gates. </div>

</div>

<div style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Among current candidates and members of Congress, Abramoff’s top beneficiaries include:</div>

<li style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px;">House Minority Whip <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00013131&cycle=2010" style="outline: none;">Eric Cantor</a> (R-Va.), who took $9,000 directly from the Abramoffs</li>

<li style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px;">Blunt, who accepted $8,500</li>

<li style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px;">Sen. <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00001758&cycle=2010" style="outline: none;">Chuck Grassley</a> (R-Iowa), who accepted $7,000</li>

<li style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px;">Rep. <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00000010&cycle=2010" style="outline: none;">Dan Burton</a> (R-Ind.), who also received $7,000</li>

<li style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px;">Rep. <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00007151&cycle=2010" style="outline: none;">Dana Rohrabacher</a> (R-Calif.), who collected $5,500</li>

</ul>

</div>

<div style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Overall, DeLay was the top recipient of contributions from the Abramoffs, raking in $44,500 from Abramoff and his wife between 1995 and 2004.</div>

</div>

<div style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">These numbers only reflect the Abramoffs’ personal donations, and do not include the numerous contributions to politicians made by Abramoff’s clients.</div>

<div style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">As the Center has <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2006/04/casting-off-abramoff.html" style="outline: none;">previously reported</a>, Abramoff’s clients donated at least $5 million to federal candidates, political parties, leadership PACs and members of the House and Senate. And 60 percent of the members of the 109th Congress, which convened from 2005 through 2006, received a contribution from at least one of his clients.</div>

</div>

<div style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">For his part, Hayworth received $2,250 from Abramoff -- money that he says he donated to charity in 2006 (although he did not part with donations he received from Abramoff’s Indian tribe clients). Hayworth cooperated with federal investigators regarding Abramoff-related charges, and he himself was never charged with any wrong-doing.</div>

</div>

<div style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Of all the Abramoffs’ donations, only $11,500 was explicitly returned to the the Abramoffs, the Center’s research shows. This may be because donating "tainted" money to charity is a more frequent method of divesting in Washington -- and difficult to track in any empirical way. The five recipients who gave the money back in full are Rohrabacher, Rep. <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00000851&cycle=2010" style="outline: none;">Frank LoBiondo</a> (R-N.J.), Rep. <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00006349&cycle=Career" style="outline: none;">Chris Cannon</a> (R-Utah), Sen. <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00009920&cycle=2010" style="outline: none;">Richard Shelby</a> (R-Ala.) and Sen. <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cycle=Career&type=I&cid=N00005004&newMem=N" style="outline: none;">James Talent</a> (R-Mo.).</div>

</div>

<div style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Download a spreadsheet of all 130-plus of the Abramoffs’ beneficiaries yourself here: <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/Abramoff_Money_Aug_2010.xls" style="outline: none;">Abramoff_Money_Aug_2010.xls</a>. And don’t forget to <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MyOS/credit.php" style="outline: none;">credit the Center for Responsive Politics</a> when using this data.</div>

</div>

<div style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">In 2006, Abramoff pled guilty to charges related to defrauding millions of dollars from Indian tribes he represented as a lobbyist, as well as corrupting public officials. He was released from federal prison to a halfway house in Maryland earlier this summer and is currently working in a kosher pizzeria in Baltimore, as <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/06/money-trail-of-jack-abramoff-still.html" style="outline: none;">OpenSecrets Blog</a><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/06/money-trail-of-jack-abramoff-still.html" style="outline: none;"> previously reported</a>.</div>

</div>

<div style=" margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Center for Responsive Politics Senior Researcher Douglas Weber and reporter Michael Beckel contributed to this report.</div>

</div>

<h4 class="entry-categories-header" style=" margin: 0px 0.25em 0px 0px; padding: 0px; clear: left; display: inline;">Categories:</h4>

<li class="entry-category" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/politicians-elections/congress/" style="outline: none;">Congress</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-category" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/influence-lobbying/industries/" style="outline: none;">Industries</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-category" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/influence-lobbying/" style="outline: none;">Influence & Lobbying</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-category" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/influence-lobbying/industries/lawyerslaw-firms/" style="outline: none;">Lawyers/law firms</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-category" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/influence-lobbying/lobbying/" style="outline: none;">Lobbying</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-category" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/influence-lobbying/industries/lobbyists/" style="outline: none;">Lobbyists</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-category" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/politicians-elections/" style="outline: none;">Politicians & Elections</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=abortion%20rights&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">abortion rights</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=Arena%20PAC&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">Arena PAC</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=Center%20for%20Responsive%20Politics&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">Center for Responsive Politics</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=Chris%20Cannon&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">Chris Cannon</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=Chuck%20Grassley&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">Chuck Grassley</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=Dan%20Burton&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">Dan Burton</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=Dana%20Rohrabacher&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">Dana Rohrabacher</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=Eric%20Cantor&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">Eric Cantor</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=Frank%20LoBiondo&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">Frank LoBiondo</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=gun%20rights&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">gun rights</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=J.D.%20Hayworth&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">J.D. Hayworth</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=Jack%20Abramoff&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">Jack Abramoff</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=James%20Talent&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">James Talent</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=John%20McCain&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">John McCain</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=K%26L%20Gates&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">K&L Gates</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=lobbying&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">lobbying</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=lobbyist&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">lobbyist</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=Preston%20Gates&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">Preston Gates</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=Richard%20Shelby&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">Richard Shelby</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=Robin%20Carnahan&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">Robin Carnahan</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=Roy%20Blunt&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">Roy Blunt</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=Susan%20B.%20Anthony%20List&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">Susan B. Anthony List</a>,</li>

<li class="entry-tag" style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; padding: 0px; display: inline;"><a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/MT/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=8&tag=Tom%20DeLay&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=8" rel="tag" style="outline: none;">Tom DeLay</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

==

MICHAEL SCHERER

THURSDAY, NOV 3, 2005 06:01 AM PDT

salon

Abramoff-Scanlon School of Sleaze

Wednesday's Senate hearings yielded more scandalous revelations about how the dynamic lobbying duo bilked American Indian tribes out of millions and used the money to win elections for their Republican clients.

Abramoff-Scanlon School of Sleaze

Up-and-coming Republican hacks would do well to watch closely the ongoing Senate investigations of superstar lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his former business partner Michael Scanlon. The power duo stand accused of exploiting Native American tribes to the tune of roughly $66 million, laundering that money into bank accounts they controlled and then using it to buy favors for powerful members of Congress and the executive branch.

But they sure did know how to play the game.

Consider one memo highlighted in a Capitol Hill hearing Wednesday that Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, sent the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to describe his strategy for protecting the tribe’s gambling business. In plain terms, Scanlon confessed the source code of recent Republican electoral victories: target religious conservatives, distract everyone else, and then railroad through complex initiatives.

“The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees,” Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. “Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them.” The brilliance of this strategy was twofold: Not only would most voters not know about an initiative to protect Coushatta gambling revenues, but religious “wackos” could be tricked into supporting gambling at the Coushatta casino even as they thought they were opposing it.

Another lesson from the Abramoff-Scanlon school: Pad your public numbers. In October 2001, the lobbying team decided to inflate the amount they were billing Indian tribes so Abramoff could make it into a “top ten” ranking of Native American lobbyists. They planned to tell the Coushatta tribe that $1 million was needed for a “public affairs” strategy. Then, by apparently falsifying an invoice from Abramoff’s law firm, Greenberg Traurig, they would reroute the money to a charity Abramoff had founded, which was paying to build a school for his children and give “sniper training” courses in Israel.

It worked like a dream, mainly because nobody knew what was happening — not the tribe, not the law firm, and certainly not the readers of the “top ten” ranking. Oversight was so lacking that it did not even matter that someone misspelled the name of Greenberg Traurig on the fraudulent invoice. “I doubt we would be issuing an invoice with our name misspelled,” said Fred Baggett, the head of Greenberg Traurig’s governmental affairs shop, who once worked closely with Abramoff. Asked to describe his former colleague, Baggett offered this faint praise: “He is an amazingly gifted person at having two sides to him.”

Others were less kind. Kevin Sickey, the chairman of the Coushatta Tribe, described Abramoff as greedy and corrupt. “He is the golden boy gone bad of the American political system,” Sickey said. William Worfel, a former Coushatta Tribal Council member, was even more blunt about the lobbying team. “In my mind, they are educated thieves who must be brought to justice,” he said.

Wednesday’s hearings provided just the latest in a long line of scandalous revelations about Abramoff’s lobbying operation, which is now under investigation by two Senate committees and the Justice Department. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who chaired the meeting, said his committee was preparing “many” legal reforms that could prevent a repeat of the Abramoff debacle. “We’ll be coming out with that in about a week,” he said. The Indian Affairs committee is scheduled to hold one more hearing on Abramoff before issuing a report; it still needs to gather testimony from Italia Federici, a close associate of Interior Secretary Gale Norton. Federici is accused of setting up a meeting for Abramoff with Interior Department officials after her nonprofit company, Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, received six-figure donations from Abramoff’s clients. Environmentalists charge that Federici’s company — which was founded by Norton — is a front for big industry polluters. Federici was scheduled to testify Wednesday, but has so far ducked a Senate subpoena. “I believe U.S. marshals will do their duty,” McCain said. “She has been unable to be located.”

Abramoff, meanwhile, is already facing the prospect of significant jail time. He has been charged with fraud in connection with an unrelated casino deal in Florida, which ended in a gangland-style killing of the man Abramoff is alleged to have defrauded. (Several people have been charged with that killing, including two employees of a company controlled by Abramoff’s business partner, Adam Kidan.) At the same time, the former top procurement official in the White House, David Safavian, has been arrested on charges of lying about a trip he took to Scotland with Abramoff. Another former White House official, Timothy Flanigan, recently withdrew his nomination to become deputy attorney general, after it became clear that he would have to testify under oath to the Senate about his relationship with Abramoff.

On Wednesday, a third former Bush administration official, J. Steven Griles, was asked to account for his relationship with Abramoff, which is detailed in dozens of e-mails obtained by the Senate. Griles claimed that he had never done Abramoff’s bidding, despite Abramoff’s own boasts that Griles was working on his behalf, and might even consider a job at Greenberg Traurig after he left government. “I can’t reconcile what Mr. Abramoff put in e-mails to anyone,” said Griles, a former coal industry lobbyist who recently served as deputy secretary of the interior.

Griles’ denials were disputed by Michael Rossetti, a former counsel to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who said Griles had shown a “very keen interest” on one matter where Abramoff had an interest. “Mr. Rossetti has a different memory on that issue than I do,” said Griles, who appeared distraught, at times, during his testimony. “I don’t want to dispute a former friend of mine and a former colleague.” After the hearing, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the conflicting testimony created confusion about the facts. “Mr. Rossetti is very credible,” McCain said. A reporter asked if Griles was also credible. “He is certainly sincere,” said the senator.

There was much less doubt, however, about the skills of Abramoff and Scanlon. They collected huge amounts of money from their unwitting clients. In September of 2001, Abramoff wrote to Scanlon asking how much money he was set to collect from two of their Native American clients. “I need to assess where I am at for the school’s sake,” he wrote, in an apparent reference to his children’s Jewish day school, the Eshkol Academy, which Abramoff was secretly bankrolling with the Indian money. Scanlon wrote back, “Your project on the project as proposed is at least 800k.” All in all, Abramoff was set to earn “a total of 2.1″ million dollars, Scanlon wrote.

Abramoff responded to his business partner, “How can I say this strongly enough: YOU IZ DA MAN.”

If political infamy is the measure of a man, nobody in Washington doubts that now.

==

"Team Abramoff" was the "more than a dozen <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Lobbyist" title="Lobbyist" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">lobbyists</a> who were members of ... the tight-knit group who worked under" <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jack_Abramoff" title="Jack Abramoff" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Jack Abramoff</a> "when he was at the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Lobbying" title="Lobbying" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">lobbying</a> helm of the Washington office of <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Greenberg_Traurig" title="Greenberg Traurig" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Greenberg Traurig LLP</a> and, before that, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Preston_Gates_and_Ellis" title="Preston Gates and Ellis" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds LLP</a>."<a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/25/AR2005062500983.html" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">[1]</a>

"Members of that influence dream-team continue to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars as registered lobbyists, often lobbying for former Abramoff clients -- unimpeded by the taint of scandal and revelations of suspicious deal-making in the brash and sometimes salty e-mails exchanged with Abramoff," James V. Grimaldi <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/25/AR2005062500983.html" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">wrote</a> in the June 26, 2005, Washington Post.

<h2 style=" margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border: none; width: auto; display: inline; background-image: none;">Contents</h2>

[<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/%22Team_Abramoff%22#" class="internal" id="togglelink" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">hide</a>] </div>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/%22Team_Abramoff%22#.22Bolting.22_Preston_Gates_for_Greenberg_Traurig" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">1 "Bolting" Preston Gates for Greenberg Traurig</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/%22Team_Abramoff%22#Questionable_Hiring_Patterns" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">2 Questionable Hiring Patterns</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-3" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/%22Team_Abramoff%22#Members_of_.22Team_Abramoff" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">3 Members of "Team Abramoff</a>

</ul>

</li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/%22Team_Abramoff%22#September_2002" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">4 September 2002</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-6" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/%22Team_Abramoff%22#Others_Known_to_Have_Worked_with_Abramoff" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">5 Others Known to Have Worked with Abramoff</a></li>

<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-7" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/%22Team_Abramoff%22#External_links" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">6 External links</a></li>

</ul>

</td></tr></tbody></table>

<h2 style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); width: auto; background-image: none;">"Bolting" Preston Gates for Greenberg Traurig</h2>

On January 8, 2001, after nearly seven years at Preston Gates, Abramoff and seven members of his "lobbying team" "bolted from Preston Gates to become Senior Director of Governmental Affairs" at Greenberg Traurig, The Buzz <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:lLhVNtKvTfwJ:www.hillzoo.com/news032801.htm+%22Amy+Berger%22,+Preston+Gates&hl=en" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">reported</a> March 28, 2001.

When asked by The Buzz why he had made the move, Abramoff's "response was that he liked the vision of Greenberg. 'They have a dominant presence,' he continued. Abramoff added, 'This move is an excellent opportunity for me and my clients with the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bush_administration" title="Bush administration" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">new Administration</a>.'"

Abramoff's "team" of people at Greenberg Traurig in March 2001 were listed as <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Michelle_Diedrick" title="Michelle Diedrick" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Michelle Diedrick</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Shawn_Vasell" title="Shawn Vasell" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Shawn Vasell</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tony_C.Rudy" title="Tony C. Rudy" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Tony C. Rudy</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Alan_Slomowitz" title="Alan Slomowitz" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Alan Slomowitz</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Todd_A.Boulanger" title="Todd A. Boulanger" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Todd A. Boulanger</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Amy_F.Berger" title="Amy F. Berger" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Amy F. Berger</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Padgett_Wilson" title="Padgett Wilson" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Padgett Wilson</a> (Pat Wilson), <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Sara_Rizzo" title="Sara Rizzo" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Sara Rizzo</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Kevin_A.Ring" title="Kevin A. Ring" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Kevin A. Ring</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Julie_Plocki" title="Julie Plocki" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Julie Plocki</a>, and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Susan_B._Ralston" title="Susan B. Ralston" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Susan B. Ralston</a>.

<h2 style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); width: auto; background-image: none;">Questionable Hiring Patterns</h2>

"With a federal corruption case intensifying, prosecutors investigating Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist, are examining whether he brokered lucrative jobs for Congressional aides at powerful lobbying firms in exchange for legislative favors," Anne E. Kornblut, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/politics/02abramoff.html?ei=5094&en=bd9c5ab4058dc00f&hp=&ex=1133499600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">reported</a> in the December 2, 2005, New York Times.

"Investigators are said to be especially interested in how <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tony_Rudy" title="Tony Rudy" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Tony Rudy</a>, a former deputy chief of staff to Representative <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Thomas_D.DeLay" title="Thomas D. DeLay" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Tom DeLay</a> of Texas, and<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Neil_G.Volz" title="Neil G. Volz" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Neil G. Volz</a>, a former chief of staff to Representative <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bob_Ney" title="Bob Ney" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Bob Ney</a> of Ohio, obtained lobbying positions with big firms on <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/K_Street_Project" title="K Street Project" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">K Street</a>," Kornblut wrote. "The hiring pattern is 'very much a part of' what prosecutors are focusing on, a person involved in the case said. Another participant confirmed that investigators were trying to determine whether aides conducted 'job negotiations with Jack Abramoff' while they were in a position to help him on Capitol Hill."

"Also under examination are payments to lobbyists and lawmakers' wives, including Mr. Rudy's wife, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Lisa_Rudy" title="Lisa Rudy" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Lisa Rudy</a>, whose firm, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Liberty_Consulting&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Liberty Consulting (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Liberty Consulting</a>, worked in consultation with Mr. Abramoff, people involved in case said," Kornblut wrote.

"Of particular interest, according to several people involved in the case, are how Mr. Rudy, who left Mr. DeLay's office in 2001 to join Greenberg Traurig, and Mr. Volz, who left Mr. Ney's office in 2002 for that firm, obtained their positions. Investigators believe Mr. Abramoff may have solicited help from both men and their supervisors on Capitol Hill while helping arrange for high-paying positions, people familiar with case said."

"As investigators try to unravel the web of relationships between the lawmakers and the lobbyists, they are considering spouses' roles, people involved in the case said," Kornblut wrote.

<h2 style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); width: auto; background-image: none;">Members of "Team Abramoff</h2>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Edward_P._Ayoob" title="Edward P. Ayoob" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Edward P. Ayoob</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Todd A. Boulanger</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Samuel_Hook" title="Samuel Hook" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Samuel Hook</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Patrick_Pizzella" title="Patrick Pizzella" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Patrick Pizzella</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Susan B. Ralston (Abramoff's former assistant)</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Kevin A. Ring</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/David_Safavian" title="David Safavian" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">David Safavian</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Shana_Tesler" title="Shana Tesler" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Shana Tesler</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jon_W._van_Horne" title="Jon W. van Horne" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Jon W. van Horne</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Shawn Vasell</li>

</ul>

On December 12, 2005, the Washington Post stated that the "following individuals lobbied for tribal clients of Jack Abramoff and, along with some of their spouses, contributed money to politicians." The Washington Post article was accompanied by a <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/custom/2005/12/12/CU2005121200434.html" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">chart</a> citing members of the "A" Team as follows:

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Edward A. Ayoob</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Amy F. Berger</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Diane_J._Blagman" title="Diane J. Blagman" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Diane J. Blagman</a> (Note: To date, there is no evidence that Blagman was a member of Team Abramoff.)</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Todd A. Boulanger (spouse Jessica Insib)</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Will_Brooke" title="Will Brooke" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Will Brooke</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Linsey_Crisler" title="Linsey Crisler" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Linsey Crisler</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Duane_R._Gibson" title="Duane R. Gibson" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Duane R. Gibson</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Shana Tesler Hook (spouse Samuel Hook)</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/James_Forrest_Miller" title="James Forrest Miller" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">James Forrest Miller</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Brigham_Pierce" title="Brigham Pierce" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Brigham Pierce</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Ronald_L._Platt" title="Ronald L. Platt" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Ronald L. Platt</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Kevin Ring (spouse Kerrie Ring)</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Sara Rizzo</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Stephanie_Leger_Short" title="Stephanie Leger Short" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Stephanie Leger Short</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Alan Slomowitz</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Michael_D._Smith" title="Michael D. Smith" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Michael D. Smith</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Shawn M. Vasell</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Michael_E.Williams(lobbyist)" title="Michael E. Williams (lobbyist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Michael E. Williams (lobbyist)</a> (spouse <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Victoria_Williams&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Victoria Williams (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Victoria Williams</a>)</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Padgett R. Wilson (Pat Wilson)</li>

</ul>

<h2 style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); width: auto; background-image: none;">September 2002</h2>

In September 2002, the following were listed in the Greenberg Traurig Washington, DC, office.

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Jack A. Abramoff</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Diane J. Blagman</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Todd A. Boulanger</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sean_Cropsey&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Sean Cropsey (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Sean Cropsey</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Duane R. Gibson</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Robert L. Platt</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Joe_R._Reeder" title="Joe R. Reeder" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Joe R. Reeder</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Kevin A. Ring</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gary_M._Shiffman" title="Gary M. Shiffman" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Gary M. Shiffman</a> (not a member of Team Abramoff)</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Howard_A._Vine" title="Howard A. Vine" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Howard A. Vine</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Michael E. Williams (lobbyist)</li>

</ul>

<h2 style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); width: auto; background-image: none;">Others Known to Have Worked with Abramoff</h2>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jennifer_Johnson_Calvert" title="Jennifer Johnson Calvert" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Jennifer Johnson Calvert</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jim_Hirni" title="Jim Hirni" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Jim Hirni</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/William_P._Jarrell" title="William P. Jarrell" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">William P. Jarrell</a></li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Gregory_McDonald" title="Gregory McDonald" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Gregory McDonald</a> (McDonald never worked with Abramoff)</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Nancy_E._Taylor" title="Nancy E. Taylor" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Nancy E. Taylor</a></li>

</ul>

<h2 style=" font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); width: auto; background-image: none;">External links</h2>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Ken Silverstein, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1998/01/silverstein_chart.html" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"Washington Wide Web,"</a> Mother Jones, January/February 1998.</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:lLhVNtKvTfwJ:www.hillzoo.com/news032801.htm+%22Amy+Berger%22,+Preston+Gates&hl=en" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"Comings and Goings,"</a> The Buzz, March 28, 2001.</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">James V. Grimaldi, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/25/AR2005062500983.html" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"Lobbyists, Clients Undeterred by Scandal. Alumni of Abramoff's 'Team' Still Collecting Fees, Trying to Influence Government,"</a> Washington Post, June 26, 2005.</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.indianz.com/News/2005/008974.asp" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"Choctaws hire three ex-Abramoff lobbyists,"</a> Indianz.com, June 27, 2005.</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Eamon Javers, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_28/b3942090.htm?campaign_id=rss_magzn" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"As The Revolving Door Turns. How does Washington work these days? A telling tale of two Capitol Hill staffers,"</a>Business Week, July 11, 2005.</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Josephine Hearn, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/071305/abramoff.html" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"Abramoff duo quits U.S.,"</a> The Hill, July 13, 2005.</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Jeff Mazur, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.firedupmissouri.com/club_abramoff" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"Jack of Clubs: Inner Circle of Abramoff, Delay, Blunt and the Boys,"</a> Fired Up Missouri, October 5, 2005.</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Julie Kay, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1132144712858" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"Greenberg Traurig Executive Describes Misconduct by Abramoff, Other Lobbyists,"</a> Daily Business Review (Law.com), November 17, 2005.</li>

<li style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;">Anne E. Kornblut, <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/politics/02abramoff.html?ei=5094&en=bd9c5ab4058dc00f&hp=&ex=1133499600&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: url(" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaagxrfwhrtb2z0d2fyzqbbzg9izsbjbwfnzvjlywr5ccllpaaaafzjrefuef59z4ejadeiq1f36k7u5e7zkxeuqpacj3wk7unokvxvk9khnqh7by9hbdydhnxgjprlqflo4m2ggfyjhhjq8v4agfrgpqx3jtjqgbofmchga="AAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2FyZQBBZG9iZSBJbWFnZVJlYWR5ccllPAAAAFZJREFUeF59z4EJADEIQ1F36k7u5E7ZKXeUQPACJ3wK7UNokVxVk9kHnQH7bY9hbDyDhNXgjpRLqFlo4M2GgfyJHhjq8V4agfrgPQX3JtJQGbofmCHgA" nakks="nAKks" jajfaaaaaelftksuqmcc="JAjFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC" padding-right="padding-right" px="px" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat" xmlns:data="data">"Lobbyist's Role in Hiring Aides Is Investigated,"</a> New York Times, December 2, 2005.</li>

</corruption><></ul><div></div>

</div>

</div>

ABRAMOFF

Attachments