WASHINGTON - Tom DeLay and his top aides were often in daily contact with lobbyist Jack Abramoff during the mid-1990s as the lobbyist made campaign contributions and arranged travel for the House leader while seeking legislative help for a multimillion-dollar client, according to law firm records made public for the first time.
DeLay's office kept Abramoff, now under criminal investigation, routinely apprised of congressional efforts to block new regulations on his client, the Northern Mariana Islands.
Abramoff's firm reported it drafted legislative materials for DeLay, and Abramoff boasted to island leaders he could use his close ties to Republican leaders to block legislation from receiving a House vote. "Getting the bill off the schedule for next week, however, should enable us to use our connections within the Leadership to ensure that ... it will not come to the floor," Abramoff wrote the islands in September 1996.
The Northern Marianas billing and correspondence records of Abramoff's former lobbying firm, Preston Gates, were obtained by The Associated Press under an open records request approved by the island government. They provide a day-by-day account of the lobbyist's campaign of fundraising, trip-providing and schmoozing with lawmakers in both parties aimed at getting Congress to block Clinton administration efforts to regulate alleged "sweatshop" garment factories in the Northern Marianas. Those rules were never enacted.
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/politics/11495448.htm
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