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Banned
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Thread Starter (continued - part 3 of 3)
One of the most intriguing Bush appointees is Susan Ralston:
Here is a link to the "map" of "west wing" offices at the white house, and a description of Susan Ralston's job title. What
follows are links and excerpts about her background and "duties". Susan Ralston was Abramoff's long time assistant, before
coming to work at the white house in 2001. Her duties include screening Karl Rove's calls, and apparently submitting names of
callers to Grover Norquist, who reportedly decides who then is cleared to speak with Rove. Special prosecutor Fitzgerald
subpoenaed Ralston, and she testified before his grand jury in July, 2005:
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7577133/.../?page=2&#note
STATE OF THE NATION | APRIL 21, 2005
............But the lobbyist’s ties to the White House extended well beyond money. When top Bush adviser Karl Rove was looking for an assistant in early 2001, Abramoff suggested his own top aide, Susan Ralston. She remains one of Rove’s top deputies. At the same time, Bush tapped Abramoff as member of his Presidential Transition Team, advising the administration on policy and hiring at the Interior Department, which oversees Native American issues. That level of close access to Bush, DeLay and other GOP leaders has been cited by many of the Indian tribes who hired Abramoff with hopes of gaining greater influence with the administration and Congress on gaming issues. Whether the tribes got their money’s worth is a question still being investigated by Congress, but there’s no question some doors were opened. In 2001, Bush met personally with a group of Indian leaders—including at least one tribe represented by Abramoff—to talk about his tax cut plan. The meeting was reportedly arranged by Grover Norquist, a prominent GOP activist with close ties to the administration and Abramoff.
While many GOP lawmakers have sought to distance themselves from Abramoff, the White House has remained largely quiet on Bush’s ties to the controversial lobbyist. Last fall, when Congress opened hearings into Abramoff’s lobbying and fund-raising, the Bush-Cheney campaign pointedly refused to return a $2,000 contribution check from the lobbyist and said there was no reason to question any other checks Abramoff brought in as a top fund-raiser for the campaign.
Editor's Note: On April 21, a White House spokesman told NEWSWEEK that Abramoff had played no role in Rove's hiring of Ralston.
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Quote:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/20...ey/index1.html
House divided
GOP enforcer Tom DeLay and his former partner Dick Armey are locked in a nasty dispute over the future of the Republican
Party.
By Mary Jacoby
May 24, 2004 | WASHINGTON
.....Although he is out of Congress and the GOP leadership, Armey makes his comments at some personal risk; he is now a
lobbyist on Washington's fabled K Street, which is ruthlessly patrolled by DeLay and his key ally, Americans for Tax Reform
president Grover Norquist. For years, Norquist and DeLay have worked to purge the nation's corporate lobby shops of
Democrats, and companies that fill GOP campaign coffers with money are rewarded with access to lawmakers. Enemies don't get
their calls returned, and without access, they lose clients. Access is coordinated by the White House, often through the
office of another powerful Texan, political strategist Karl Rove.
For two years, the assistant who answered Rove's phone was a woman who had previously worked for lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a
close friend of Norquist's and a top DeLay fundraiser. One Republican lobbyist, who asked not to be named because DeLay and
Rove have the power to ruin his livelihood, said the way Rove's office worked was this: "Susan took a message for Rove, and
then called Grover to ask if she should put the caller through to Rove. If Grover didn't approve, your call didn't go
through." ........
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/fea...6.whoswho.html
........How did Norquist attain such influence over Ralston? Flowers every Friday? Redskins tickets? The answer, actually, is
what the White House ethics lawyers call a "preexisting relationship." Ralston had formerly worked for lobbyist Jack
Abramoff, a close friend of Norquist's and a top fundraiser for House majority whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
Ralston has since left the pressure cooker White House job for possibly the most isolated island in Washington. She is now
executive assistant to Eddy R. Badrina, the senior advisor of the President's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and
Pacific Islanders. ............
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...043001147.html
Untangling a Lobbyist's Stake in a Casino Fleet
With Millions of Dollars Unaccounted for, Another Federal Investigation Targets Abramoff
By Susan Schmidt and James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, May 1, 2005; Page A01
It was a gangland-style hit straight out of "Goodfellas.".......
,,,,,,,,,,A Sealed Envelope
The lenders, buyers and sellers gathered to begin closing the deal on the morning of Sept. 18, 2000, in the midtown Manhattan offices of Foothill Capital's lawyers. Tensions were running high; Kidan and Abramoff were annoyed that Walker was requiring them to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars more than they had expected in closing fees.
That night, though, they smoothed things over during a Monday night football game, between the Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys. Kidan and Walker traveled to Washington from New York to join Abramoff in the lobbyist's leased skybox at FedEx Field. Abramoff was spending about $1 million a year on skyboxes at FedEx Field, MCI Center and Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and often allowed politicians and their staffers to use them for fundraising. A copy of a roster maintained by Abramoff and obtained by The Post shows he provided the box for DeLay's use that night.........
[On July 22nd, 2000, lobbyist Jack Abramoff asked his assistant Susan Ralston to provide him an accounting of how much various clients contributed to maintaining the skyboxes at various Washington area sports arenas.
CLICK LINK TO VIEW DOCUMENT: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/ab...s.7242000.html ]
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Quote:
.........Susan Ralston Sports Suites Memo
From the National Journal: "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."
On April 20th, 2000, Jack Abramoff's personal assistant Susan Ralston wrote a memo outlining guidelines for doling out skybox seats to clients, politicians and Capitol Hill staffers.
CLICK LINK TO VIEW DOCUMENT: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/ra...o.4202000.html
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...091201630.html
The Costly Price of Facing a Grand Jury
White House Staffers Suffer Stress, Fees
By Sam Coates
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 13, 2005; Page A25
Sympathy can be hard to come by for White House officials who are summoned to appear before a grand jury.............
..........The latest White House staffer to face the grand jury is Susan B. Ralston, assistant to White House Deputy Chief of
Staff Karl Rove, who gave testimony to the committee investigating the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie
Plame............
.........Ralston appeared at the end of July on the same day as former Rove aide Israel "Izzy" Hernandez, according to ABC
News. The reason Ralston, 37, was asked to testify remains unclear, but it has heightened suspicions that the locus of the
investigation still centers on Rove.
Ralston declined to discuss her interview with the grand jury for this article, or the burden that it has caused. Friends
said she had not spoken with them about it.
Americans for Tax Reform President Grover G. Norquist, who described himself as a friend and a work contact, said he was not
aware that she had even testified. "It hasn't come up, and I haven't noticed anything, in work or other contact. I think
she's right as rain. On the other hand, I haven't had a conversation about it with her," he said.........
.......According to a White House report to Congress, Ralston's salary last year was $67,600. In an interview last September
with Asian Week, she said that she took a "significant pay cut" in 2001 from her job working with a prominent
lobbyist.........
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Quote:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0506-02.htm
Published on Friday, May 6, 2005 by the Associated Press
Lobbyist Had Close Contact With Bush Team
by Sharon Theimer
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.
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.
"I hope you will keep my office informed on the progress of this initiative," Bush wrote in a July 18, 1997, letter praising
the islands' school plan and copying in an Abramoff deputy.
White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said Thursday that Bush didn't consider Abramoff a friend. "They may have met on occasion,
but the president does not know him," she said.
As for the number of Abramoff lobbying team contacts with Bush officials documented in the billing records, Healy said: "We
do not know how he defines 'contacts.'" ............
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<b>The Following Material Was All Previously Posted and then Removed, from the "Rove in Charge of NOLA", thread:
Quote:
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=50318
.........When Rove got to the White House in 2001, he hired as his personal assistant Susan Ralston, previously Abramoff's personal assistant. Ralston has since become an insider's insider.
-- Norquist reportedly made a deal in which Ralston would take messages for Rove at the White House, then call Norquist to tell her whether she should put the caller through.
-- John Colyandro wrote direct mail pieces for Rove in the 1980s. When he was hired as executive director of the Texans for a Republican Majority PAC, he was described as a "longtime pal of Rove's." This week, a judge said Colyandro must stand trial for laundering over $600,000 in corporate campaign contributions........
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...091300588.html
...........Grover Norquist, a Rove ally who runs Americans for Tax Reform, is among those lobbying the White House to suspend wage supports for service workers in the hurricane zone.
Last week, Bush issued an executive order lifting the Davis-Bacon rules mandating that construction workers on federal contracts be paid the average wage in a region. The White House argued the regulations were slowing reconstruction and raising federal costs.
Now Labor Department and White House officials are examining a similar move for service workers covered by the McNamara-O'Hara Service Contract Act, which extended prevailing wage rules to service workers. Administration officials are concerned that workers on demolition and debris-removal jobs could protest that even with construction wage supports lifted, they should be paid prevailing wages because their work is more service-related than construction-related.
Any move to lift service wage supports would elicit protests by labor unions and their Democratic allies. The Depression-era Davis-Bacon Act includes a provision allowing its suspension for natural disasters. The Service Contract Act does not, and its suspension may be unprecedented, labor experts say.
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Quote:
http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/expo...505/labor.html
......Bush waived Davis-Bacon for storm-affected areas in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana as well as the two southernmost counties of Florida, one day after receiving a letter from Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and 34 other House Republicans urging him to do so. While hundreds of thousands of Gulf homes were destroyed, local reports estimated that Katrina leveled about 350 houses in South Florida.
Norquist, for his part, was far from cowed by the possibility of political counterattack by the AFL-CIO or Change to Win.
“Oh, gee, maybe they’ll try to oppose the president the next time he runs for office,” Norquist cracked. He added that the temporary Davis-Bacon suspension “certainly strengthens the case” for an eventual full repeal. “It will make it obvious to people what the dead-weight costs of Davis-Bacon will be.”
On the heels of Davis-Bacon will come a likely easing of the Service Contract Act, mandating a prevailing wage for service workers on federal contracts. The purpose of abandoning wage floors, both labor and conservative sources agreed, is to increase efficiency and help companies rebuilding the Gulf Coast to save money. Where that money will go is another story.
Samuel wondered whether Congress should institute an oversight mechanism to ensure construction savings are passed from the private companies retained by the government and into federal coffers. “These no-bid contracts, are they somehow mandating lower profits?” he asked. Firms awarded lucrative reconstruction jobs include several with ties to the White House, and most have already reaped the benefits through rising stock prices.
The impact of labor deregulation will be felt politically as well as financially. One building-trades lobbyist, who asked to remain anonymous because his group’s internal division means it can take no stance on the issue, pointed out that prevailing wages in the Gulf are so much lower than the national average that the suspension will barely move profits.
“Politically, it was a mistake. Practically, it will have no impact. It was a fight the administration didn’t need to take on at this time,” the lobbyist said.......
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Quote:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php...=Jack_Abramoff
......College years
In college, Abramoff organized Massachusetts campuses for Reagan's presidential campaign in 1980. A year later he graduated from Brandeis University and the Georgetown University Law Center.
Abramoff was soon elected chairman of the College Republican National Committee with the campaign being managed by Grover Norquist and aided by Ralph E. Reed, Jr.. "It is not our job to seek peaceful coexistence with the Left," Abramoff was quoted as saying in the group's 1983 annual report, "Our job is to remove them from power permanently." .....
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Quote:
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news...8reedbama.html
Tribe cash fed Ralph Reed's Alabama fight
> By ALAN JUDD, JIM GALLOWAY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
> Published on: 05/18/05
Ralph Reed delivered what was expected as a consultant to two Alabama anti-gambling campaigns: victories over proposals for a state lottery and video poker, and donations totaling $1.15 million.
But Reed didn't tell the campaign organizations — and, he insists, he didn't know — that the money came from a Mississippi Indian tribe trying to protect its casinos from competition.
The money's path to the Christian Coalition of Alabama and another anti-lottery group echoes Reed's entanglement in a scandal surrounding Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Indian casino money in Texas.
In that case, Abramoff hired Reed in 1999 to build public support for closing the Tigua tribe's casino in El Paso. The casino closed in 2002. Immediately afterward, Abramoff, who had kept his role secret, offered to help the Tiguas reopen the casino — for $4 million, according to Senate testimony.
Reed has said he was unaware that he was being paid with money from rival tribes.
In Alabama, leaders of the anti-gambling groups said Reed was the conduit for contributions from a group headed by anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, who has said the money originated with the Mississippi tribe. The Alabama organizations said Reed had repeatedly told them the money was not tainted by ties to gambling interests.
Who misled whom?
Reed says Abramoff, who is facing investigations by two Senate committees and the U.S. Justice Department in the Texas casino scheme, arranged for contributions to one of the Alabama anti-gambling groups and assured him it did not come from gambling interests. The groups told Reed they would not accept money linked to gambling.
Reed has not been accused of any wrongdoing in Alabama or in Texas, where his efforts to close one tribe's casino were surreptitiously funded by rival tribes. But as he launches his first campaign for elective office — the Republican nomination for Georgia's lieutenant governor — the longtime political operative's activities have come under increased scrutiny.
Most of the $1.15 million — from Norquist's Washington-based anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform — wound up in the hands of Reed's Atlanta-based consulting firm, Century Strategies Inc., which ran the anti-gambling campaigns.
"We just turned around and wrote out the check to them," John Giles of Montgomery, president of the Alabama Christian Coalition, which accepted $850,000, said this week.
Both the Christian Coalition and Citizens Against Legalized Lottery, a Birmingham-based group that led the successful fight against a state lottery proposal in 1999, say they repeatedly pressed Reed and his employees to vouch for the purity of the cash.
"The ground rules pretty much were set in stone from Day One," said Jim Cooper, the anti-lottery group's chairman. "Absolutely, they [Reed's employees] knew our position on it. We were in a war. We were very careful."
The Christian Coalition of Alabama has launched an internal investigation. Reed is a former leader of the national Christian Coalition but has no formal ties to the Alabama group.
Reed spokeswoman Lisa Baron said this week that Reed was unaware of the source of the money. Any blame, she said, rests with Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist.
"From the very beginning of this work, we understood that the anti-gambling activists would be funded by a coalition of groups opposed to an expansion of gambling," Baron said in a statement. "We were also sensitive to the fact that many members of the group, including the Christian Coalition of Alabama, did not want to accept contributions from gaming activity."
The law firm where Abramoff worked told Reed the money for the Christian Coalition didn't come from gambling sources, Baron said, and "we passed those assurances on."
A spokesman for Abramoff's lawyer declined to comment.
Multiple assurances
Through Baron, Reed said for the first time that his anti-gambling work in Alabama was part of a larger operation organized by Abramoff in which Reed helped close the Tigua casino in Texas. Reed was paid $4.2 million for that three-year campaign — money that has been traced to rival tribes with casinos of their own. Reed has said he didn't know where that money came from, either.
The Alabama contributions — but not Reed's role — came to light last week in a report in The Boston Globe.
The newspaper reported that Americans for Tax Reform wrote a check in 1999 for $300,000 to Citizens Against Legalized Lottery in Birmingham. Months later, the group wrote three checks totaling $850,000 to the Christian Coalition of Alabama. Both groups this week acknowledged receiving the money.
Norquist, the anti-tax group's president and a leading voice among conservative activists, was quoted in the Globe as saying a Mississippi tribe gave him the $1.15 million he passed to the Alabama anti-gambling organizations. Norquist said the tribe wanted to stifle competition.
In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Norquist declined to elaborate on the Globe's account. He has refused to identify the tribe.
But four years ago, Norquist's group accidentally handed a list of its 1999 donors, a supplemental statement on its federal tax return, to Robert Dreyfuss, a writer for The Nation magazine. The filing, a copy of which has been obtained by the Journal-Constitution, lists $360,000 from the Mississippi Band of Choctaws. A spokeswoman for the tribe, which operates two casinos, declined to comment this week.
The Alabama anti-lottery organization had no reason to question the source of the money Norquist's group donated, said Cooper, the campaign's chairman.
But Giles, the Alabama president of the Christian Coalition, asked multiple times about the source of the money, a former Century Strategies employee said.
"On at least a couple of occasions, John Giles called to ask if I was absolutely sure there was no gambling money — direct or indirect — in any money they had received," said John Pudner, then a senior project manager at Century Strategies. "Giles even told me he wanted to issue a press release stating this — and I went and asked Ralph to make sure, and Ralph assured me there was no gambling money involved."
Pudner said he has no reason to believe Reed knew the cash originated with the tribe.
Both Alabama groups say Reed made no commission from the money he brought in. Baron, the Reed spokeswoman, said the firm made "no significant profit" from running both anti-gambling groups' campaigns.
The anti-lottery group paid Reed's firm $1.1 million of the total $1.6 million it raised. Much of the money went to buy air time for television and radio ads. Baron said Century Strategies received the "standard" commissions, but declined to say what that percentage was.
The $300,000 check from Americans for Tax Reform — the largest to the anti-lottery campaign — arrived six days before the Oct. 12, 1999, lottery referendum. Within five days of receiving the money, the group wrote three checks to Reed totaling $270,960, records show.
In the case of the Christian Coalition, Giles said three separate checks from Americans for Tax Reform arrived in the spring of 2000, while the Alabama Legislature was in session. Lawmakers were considering a bill to permit video poker machines at the state's slumping dog tracks.
"Every penny" of the money, Giles said, went to Reed's firm to pay for campaign consulting, including the mailing of anti-gambling literature.
Some taken on trust
According to Reed's spokeswoman, the donations to the two Alabama organizations traveled slightly different paths.
For the $300,000 donation to the anti-lottery campaign, Reed dealt directly with Americans for Tax Reform. Baron, Reed's spokeswoman, said Reed sought no assurances that the money had no gaming ties because of Norquist's public stance against state monopolies in gambling.
But for the $850,000 sent to the Christian Coalition of Alabama, Baron said, Reed went to Abramoff, who obtained the checks from Norquist's group. Reed's spokeswoman said the guarantees that the money had no gambling origins were based on what Reed was told by Abramoff, a close friend for more than 20 years.
Reed already is facing questions in the Texas casino controversy. He has voluntarily turned over documents from Century Strategies to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee investigating Abramoff's relationship with six tribal clients, including the Choctaws in Mississippi.
The probes center on allegations that Abramoff bilked tribal clients out of millions of dollars in lobbying and public relations fees — and often pressed them for donations to his favorite political causes.
In the Texas case, and now with the campaigns in Alabama, Reed maintains his sole purpose had been to halt the expansion of gambling. In the Tigua campaign, Reed has said he had "no direct knowledge" that he was being paid with money from rival casinos.
Reed acknowledged that he knew Abramoff's law firm had clients with gambling interests, but has said, "We were not aware of every specific client or interest."
In Alabama, supporters of the lottery and video poker proposals have long accused opponents of relying on money from out-of-state casinos. The past week's revelations have stirred old arguments, which erupted in the state House of Representatives as lawmakers concluded their annual session Monday.
Republicans blocked last-minute efforts to revive a bill requiring nonprofit groups — such as the Christian Coalition — to disclose the sources of money they use to buy advertisements to influence referendums. The sponsor, Rep. Randy Hinshaw, a Democrat from Huntsville, said he was skeptical that such groups don't know where their money comes from.
"You give me $850,000," Hinshaw said Tuesday, "and I'm going to know who gave me that so I can give them a big ol' kiss."
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...200921_pf.html
..........In September, however, Reed's office provided a different explanation. "We knew that Greenberg Traurig was recruiting coalition members [for the anti-gambling effort] and raising funds as well, but we had no direct knowledge of their clients or interests," the office said in a statement. "At no time were we retained by nor did we represent any casino or casino company."
E-mails released yesterday indicated that Reed did know the name of the client. OnApril 4, 1999, Abramoff told Reed to put together a cost plan for the campaign, "including a total budget figure with category breakdowns." He added: "Once I get this I will call Nell at Choctaw and get it approved."
In subsequent e-mails, Abramoff and Reed discuss how Reed would be reimbursed by the Choctaws through Abramoff's firm, and Americans for Tax Reform, a group founded by conservative activist Grover Norquist.
Yesterday, Reed's office said his comments yesterday and the September statement were not inconsistent.
The "Nell" referred to in the April 4 e-mail is Nell Rogers, who had been the Choctaws' main contact with Abramoff. Called to testify yesterday, she told the committee the tribe knew that Abramoff and Scanlon were using "intermediaries" such as the American International Center to pay for the anti-gambling campaigns.
"I am sure there probably were concerns -- or public perception concerns -- about some of the recipients, about not being associated with a tribe or with a gaming tribe," she said.
Abramoff, Norquist and Reed have been political allies since their days as leaders of the College Republicans. Reed and Abramoff appear to have set up a business arrangement as Reed wound down from the 1998 election cycle. Responding to a query from Abramoff about how candidates he supported had done, Reed wrote: "Hey, now that I'm done with the electoral politics, I need to start humping in corporate accounts! I'm counting on you to help me with some contacts."
The Choctaws, the richest and most successful gambling tribe in the country, initially defended Abramoff when his activities first drew scrutiny over a year ago. But they began cooperating with government investigators last summer after being told by Greenberg Traurig that its internal investigation had found fraud in the lobbyist's work for the tribe.
Yesterday, McCain said the committee had found that Abramoff and Scanlon had pocketed $6.5 million of the $7.7 million in consulting fees they received from the Choctaws. McCain said that Abramoff had directed the Choctaws to hire Scanlon for consulting work, but never revealed to the tribe that they had a secret partnership, which they called "gimme five," according to the e-mails.............
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<b>Free Link to following LaTimes report: </b>
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/wa...investigation/
Quote:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...itics-national
August 7, 2005
latimes.com : National Politics
Inquiry Into Lobbyist Sputters After Demotion
# The unusual financial deal between Jack Abramoff and officials in Guam drew scrutiny.
By Walter F. Roche Jr., Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — A U.S. grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, <h4>but President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor and the inquiry ended soon after.</h4>
The previously undisclosed Guam inquiry is separate from a federal grand jury in Washington that is investigating allegations that Abramoff bilked Indian tribes out of millions of dollars.
In Guam, an American territory in the Pacific, investigators were looking into Abramoff's secret arrangement with Superior Court officials to lobby against a court revision bill then pending in the U.S. Congress. The legislation, since approved, gave the Guam Supreme Court authority over the Superior Court.
In 2002, Abramoff was retained by the Superior Court in what was an unusual arrangement for a public agency. The Times reported in May that Abramoff was paid with a series of $9,000 checks funneled through a Laguna Beach lawyer to disguise the lobbyist's role working for the Guam court. No separate contract was authorized for Abramoff's work.
Guam court officials have not explained the contractual arrangement. At the time, Abramoff was a well-known lobbyist in the Pacific islands because of his work for the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas garment manufacturers, accused of employing workers in sweatshop conditions..........................
.............A day later, the chief prosecutor, U.S. Atty. Frederick A. Black, who had launched the investigation, was demoted. A White House news release announced that Bush was replacing Black.
The timing caught some by surprise. Despite his officially temporary status, Black had held the acting U.S. attorney assignment for more than a decade.
The acting U.S. attorney was a controversial official in Guam. At the time he was removed, Black was directing a long-term investigation into allegations of public corruption in the administration of then-Gov. Carl Gutierrez. The inquiry produced numerous indictments, including some of the governor's political associates and top aides.
Black also arranged for a security review in the aftermath of Sept. 11 that was seen as a potential threat to loose immigration rules favored by local business leaders. In fact, the study ordered by Black eventually cited substantial security risks in Guam and the Northern Marianas.
Abramoff, who then represented the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, alerted his clients in a memo about the expected report and warned: "It will require some major action from the Hill and a press attack to get this back in the bottle."........................
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2004Nov7.html
Abramoff Allies Keeping Distance
Lobbyist Under Scrutiny for Dealings With Indian Tribes
By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 8, 2004; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...004Nov7_2.html
........... Later, Abramoff brought in Reed, who was paid $4.2 million from 2001 to 2003 to mobilize Christians to oppose the plans of those threatening Abramoff's Indian gaming clients. In 2001, Abramoff left Preston Gates and joined the Miami-based law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP.
In 1995, Abramoff took on another major client, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, an American protectorate in the Pacific. Again, he capitalized on his ability to exploit conservative ideology.
The Marianas sought to retain exemptions from U.S. immigration and labor laws to import laborers from China at $3.05 an hour -- $2 under the federal minimum wage -- to make garments labeled "Made in the U.S.A." Abramoff portrayed the Marianas as a case study of the success of the free market unfettered by wage and immigration laws.
DeLay became Abramoff's strongest ally, leading the fight against Democratic efforts to impose wage, hour and immigration regulations on the protectorate. On a trip to the Marianas, DeLay told officials, according to media accounts:
"When one of my closest and dearest friends, Jack Abramoff, your most able representative in Washington, D.C., invited me to the islands, I wanted to see firsthand the free-market success and the progress and reform you have made."
Now, however, DeLay and many of Abramoff's past friends and allies are keeping their distance. DeLay's staff has issued a statement in his name declaring that "if anybody is trading on my name to get clients or to make money, that is wrong and they should stop it immediately."..........
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Quote:
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansas...l/12489890.htm
Posted on Sat, Aug. 27, 2005
Tribes paid, but for what?
Insiders tapped Indians for millions: Kansas, Missouri politicians gained
By DAVID GOLDSTEIN
The Star’s Washington Correspondent
“This has exposed the seamiest side of the kinds of practices that are used in Washington to buy influence over government decisions and make a lot of money for lobbyists.”
Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21
WASHINGTON –– The Tiguas of Texas had just lost their casino and were told that if they wanted to see profits again to start throwing money around Capitol Hill.
They were told exactly where to aim it.
The Coushattas of Louisiana, the Choctaws of Mississippi and other tribes with gambling operations also wrote big and bigger checks.
Between 1999 and 2004, nearly $1 million went to the campaigns of lawmakers from House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican, to then-Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat.
Sen. Conrad Burns, a Montana Republican and a subcommittee chairman with huge sway over Indian affairs, got the most, nearly $140,000.
Even Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican and a champion of family values, received $42,000.
The maestro behind this orchestration of cash was Jack Abramoff, a lawyer-lobbyist whose influence — based largely on his friendship with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican — was rivaled by few, until its collapse last year.
It turns out that the Indian money sent to campaign coffers was dwarfed by the dollars that stayed in the pockets of Abramoff and business partner Michael Scanlon, who headed a public relations firm.
Federal investigators are looking at whether Abramoff and Scanlon overbilled six tribal clients — whom they sometimes called “monkeys” and “troglodytes” in their e-mails — by charging them more than $82 million in fees from 2001-03.
“Even in this town, where huge sums are routinely paid as the price of political success, the figures are astonishing,” Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, told a Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing. “But what the tribes actually received for such astronomical sums is mystifying.”
Abramoff and Scanlon, a former DeLay press secretary, are being investigated by Congress and a five-agency task force composed of the Justice Department, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of the Interior and the National Indian Gaming Commission.
Both men have invoked the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination at Senate hearings. Defending his actions in Time magazine, Abramoff said: “The return on investment for these tribes … is far better than anything they or we could have imagined.”
The lobbyist made the news again this month when a different federal probe led to fraud charges involving a deal for a Florida gambling cruise firm. His defense lawyers had no comment.
High-flying
The brash Republican rainmaker entertained members of Congress at four sports arena skyboxes in the Washington-Baltimore area and wined and dined them at his own restaurant. Some ate on his tab, and several held fund-raisers there.
He set up Scottish golf trips for DeLay and Rep. Robert Ney, an Ohio Republican, which have raised other ethical questions.
He helped arrange a White House meeting in 2001 between tribal leaders and President Bush, who was opposed to gambling in 1998 when he ran for re-election as governor of Texas. The lobbyist was also one of Bush’s “pioneers,” fund-raisers who gathered $100,000 for him in 2004.
Top Interior Department officials, who oversaw Indian affairs, took his calls. He hired staffers from DeLay’s and Ney’s offices. Some of his own aides ended up in key corners of the capital, such as working for White House advisor Karl Rove.
Abramoff had forged his connections in the era of President Ronald Reagan, leading college Republicans. His deputies were Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, top conservative strategists today.
Heady times arrived in 1995, when Republicans took over Congress. Abramoff was better-placed than many Washington lobbyists.
One of his early successes was the defeat of federal minimum wage and work standards in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific, where prominent U.S. apparel makers could still attach a “Made in the U.S.A.” label.
Abramoff, lobbying for Marianas officials, took DeLay and others on junkets to the islands, depicting them as an exemplar of free market capitalism, despite allegations of sweatshop conditions.
Abramoff’s influence was seen in 2000 in the purchase of Suncruz Casinos, a fleet of cruising gambling boats plying the waters off Florida.
DeLay sent a flag that had flown over the Capitol as a gift to Gus Boulis, Suncruz’s owner, while negotiations were under way. When the deal seemed to sour, Ney used the Congressional Record to criticize Boulis and praise Adam Kidan, Abramoff’s partner in the deal. Ney later said Abramoff had misled him.
A federal grand jury indicted Abramoff and Kidan this month, charging them with faking a $23 million wire transfer, which was to be their equity in the $147.5 million Suncruz deal.
In a dark footnote, Boulis, who had complained of being swindled, died in a gangland-style shooting a few months after the sale.
‘Stupid folks’
More than 225 Indian tribes currently operate casinos; annual revenues approach $20 billion.
Those that hired Abramoff were the Coushatta and Chitimacha Tribes of Louisiana, the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians of California, the Mississippi Choctaws and the Tiguas of Texas.
Abramoff promised to work his political magic in the inner chambers of Capitol Hill to protect their gambling interests.
The “magic” was cynicism and greed, in portions that were large even by Washington standards...........
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Last edited by host; 09-22-2005 at 04:21 AM..
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09-22-2005, 03:53 AM
