The Pimping of the Presidency

[dogday]

Four months after he took the oath of office in 2001, President George W. Bush was the attraction, and the White House the venue, for a fundraiser organized by the alleged perpetrator of the largest billing fraud in the history of corporate lobbying. In May 2001, Jack Abramoff’s lobbying client book was worth $4.1 million in annual billing for the Greenberg Traurig law firm. He was a friend of Bush advisor Karl Rove. He was a Bush “Pioneer,” delivering at least $100,000 in bundled contributions to the 2000 campaign. He had just concluded his work on the Bush Transition Team as an advisor to the Department of the Interior. He had sent his personal assistant Susan Ralston to the White House to work as Rove’s personal assistant. He was a close friend, advisor, and high-dollar fundraiser for the most powerful man in Congress, Tom DeLay. Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife operated.

Abramoff’s White House guests were the chiefs of two of the six casino-rich Indian tribes he and his partner Mike Scanlon ultimately billed $82 million for services tribal leaders now claim were never performed or were improperly performed. Together the six tribes would make $10 million in political contributions, at Abramoff’s direction, almost all of it to Republican campaigns of his choosing. On May 9, 2001, when he ushered the two tribal chiefs into the White House to meet the President, The Washington Post story that would end his lobbying career and begin two Senate Committee investigations was three years away. (When the Post story broke in February 2004, however, Abramoff and Scanlon, a former Tom DeLay press aide, were already targets of a U.S. Attorney’s investigation in Washington.)

http://www.texasobserver.org/showForPrint_new.asp?ArticleID=13

[Octafish]

1. K Street Project

Thanks for the great article, dogday. Texas Observer is an outstanding resource. Here's another one of theirs on the subject...

K Street Croupiers

How Two of Tom DeLay's Players Beat the House at the Grand Coushatta Casino

BY LOU DUBOSE

On May 9, 2001, Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff did President George W. Bush a small favor by directing a modest sum of money to Grover Norquist. Norquist was bringing a group of Republican state legislators to the White House to sell them Bush’s proposed tax cuts. He decided to use the event to make a little money for his organization, Americans for Tax Reform. So he had Abramoff ask two of his American Indian clients for $25,000 each for the privilege of meeting the president. This money ATR raised at the White House three years ago is a small part of a big scandal involving Abramoff, his partner Mike Scanlon, six Indian tribes, $66 million in questionable lobbying fees, and millions of dollars in political contributions.

Also entangled in the scandal is House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, whose Washington “network” was offered to Indian casino clients by Abramoff and Scanlon, if the tribes would hire them. DeLay is the only member of Congress associated with Abramoff and Scanlon’s extensive casino tribe dealings. After DeLay used his leadership position to kill a bill that would have taxed Indian casinos, Abramoff and Scanlon used their access to “the Leader” to attract Indian casino clients. (Neither of the two men seemed to have any interest in Indian tribes that did not have casinos.) The Louisiana tribe that paid almost half of the lobbying fees collected by Abramoff and Scanlon contributed more to DeLay’s political action committee than they did to any other member of Congress in 2002. Because of his close ties with the two men, DeLay is the only member of Congress whose conduct has been questioned in an ongoing Senate committee investigation of the lobbying scandal. Other federal and state agencies are investigating the two men as well.

The Indian lobby fee story moved DeLay toward center stage in the Senate shortly after three of his fund-raisers were indicted in Austin and he himself was handed three separate admonishments by the House Ethics Committee for transgressions unrelated to Abramoff and Scanlon. So for DeLay, who is lawyered up and nervously watching a grand jury in Austin, Abramoff and Scanlon represent a third front in what now seems like an endless war over ethical and legal questions involving his fund-raising operations.

The paper trail that leads from Norquist’s office to the Coushatta Nation and to the White House illustrates how easily Abramoff and Scanlon extracted money from clients who were flush with casino cash and convinced that any political contributions the Washington lobbyists suggested, and the outrageous fees they charged, would serve the tribes’ interests. Norquist is the brains and muscle behind the policy of a Republican House defined by the “Class of 94,” which made Newt Gingrich speaker and elected DeLay whip. By the time George W. Bush took his constitutional oath in January 2001, Norquist’s weekly meetings between lobbyists and congressional staffers implementing the Gingrich-DeLay revolution were an extension of the permanent Republican government in Washington. He was also overseeing the K Street Project, a DeLay operation which ensures that only Republicans are hired for high-paying jobs on K Street—the D.C. strip of lobby shops, trade associations, and law firms. He was the most powerful policy advocate in Washington in 2001 and still is today.

Norquist’s discreet approach to the Indian tribal leaders provides rare insight into the elaborate lobbying and fund-raising machine that American Enterprise Institute congressional scholar Norm Ornstein describes as a modern-day Tammany Hall: a pay-to-play operation that moves congressional Republicans into high-paying lobby jobs and then requires them to contribute to the party and its various ancillary groups. While Abramoff and Scanlon enriched themselves, they never forgot who provided them their opportunity to plunder. Both men gave lavishly to Republican PACs and candidates. Abramoff, for example, was a Bush Pioneer, raising $100,000 for the 2004 presidential campaign while giving $40,000 to DeLay’s PACs. Before he was run off the reservation, Abramoff was ranked 93rd nationally among Republican Party donors. Scanlon, only a few years after he finished paying off his college loans, contributed $500,000 to the Republican Governors’ Association—the single largest donation it received in 2002. The influence the two men wielded in Republican circles was further leveraged by the money they persuaded their Indian clients to contribute.

CONTINUED...

http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=1800

[dogday]

2. Thanks for this article as well

I think both explain in detail what was happening. I can't wait for the dam to burst on this one.