1-12-06, 9:35 am
When 'Casino Jack' Abramoff pled guilty earlier this month to several counts of wire fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials, there was a palpable rise in blood pressure among Republican members of Congress who can expect close scrutiny from federal law enforcement officials as a result.
Dozens of Republican leaders and members of Congress, from Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and House Speaker Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) to President Bush scrambled to distance themselves from the star lobbyist who remade Washington's infamous seamy underbelly in the image of the GOP. Members of Congress meekly turned over thousands of dollars (out of millions raised) from Abramoff to various charities to be named later.
For Bush’s part, his actual refund of the tainted cash amounts to a tiny fraction of what Abramoff brought in. Abramoff helped raise $100,000 for the Bush campaign in 2004, but the administration says it will only give $6,000 away to charity.
Meanwhile, the first major casualty of the Abramoff/Republican corruption scandal was former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) who withdrew from consideration for returning to his post after his indictment last September. A rebellion within the ranks of the Republican Party demanding DeLay’s removal – mainly from younger and moderate members worried about their reelection chances – forced DeLay to call off his reinstatement campaign.
DeLay was indicted last September by a Texas grand jury for illegally funneling laundered corporate money to the campaigns of several Texas Republican state legislators through his political action committee.
Federal investigators are also investigating whether DeLay illegally accepted money for several trips abroad to meet with foreign business interests from a front group for an Abramoff controlled slush fund posing as a non-profit.
According to an Associated Press story published this week, after accepting money from Abramoff, DeLay wrote a letter in 2001 to the Department of Justice and to other federal and state officials demanding intervention on behalf of Abramoff's casino-owning clients.
Now DeLay is threatening to sue any television or radio stations that run ads exposing his links to Abramoff’s network of bribery and fraud, according to a local media outlet in Houston, Texas. Two public interest groups, the Campaign for America's Future and the Public Campaign Action Fund, have joined together to place ads about DeLay’s role in Abramoff/Republican scandal.
In the matter of the casinos, Abramoff has also admitted to providing Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), briefly considered as a replacement for DeLay last October, with campaign contributions and a request to use his position to influence the legislative process on behalf of Abramoff's clients. Ney apparently complied.
This bribery scandal may cause Ney to be the next big domino to fall. Rep. James McCrery (R-LA) told Gannet News Service that Ney is likely to be indicted next.
Other top Republican officials are also tainted. According to a story by Bloomberg News earlier this week, Reps. Roy Blunt (R-MO) John Boehner (R-OH), the top candidates for DeLay's old job, have strong links to the lobbying network that Abramoff built as well as to Jim Ellis, indicted along with DeLay in the Texas money laundering scandal.
Bloomberg News also revealed that Blunt authored a letter in May 2003 to Secretary of Interior Gale Norton echoing DeLay's earlier demand that the administration intervene on behalf of Abramoff's clients.
Blunt also proved worthy of the more than $200,000 in lifetime contributions he took from tobacco giant Philip Morris Cos., now Altria Group Inc., by trying to insert language in a bill that would have helped the company.
For his part, Boehner's connections to Abramoff and the network of lobbyists might even be stronger as it was his job in the mid-1990s as House Republican Conference chair to meet with them on a regular basis. In one notorious incident in 1995, Boehner handed out campaign checks from the tobacco lobby to Republican colleagues on the floor of the House as they prepared to vote on whether or not to eliminate a tobacco subsidy.
Boehner also chairs the House Education and Workforce Committee, which has oversight over regulations and laws governing the federal student loan program. According to Bloomberg News, Boehner accepted tens of thousands of dollars from student loan company Sallie Mae just as his committee prepared to write legislation regarding the federal student loan program.
Besides a long list of Republican members of Congress who will likely be investigated or closely scrutinized by federal authorities, other Republican names have filtered out as part of the corruption scandal. Former White House aide David Safavian pled guilty last fall after his arrest in connection with his entanglements with Abramoff's lobbying operations.
Former Christian Coalition head and adviser to Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, also appears to have lost momentum in his bid for lieutenant governor in Georgia as a result of e-mails demanding campaign cash from Abramoff and contacts to his corporate connections. Reed also accepted gifts, trips, and money from Abramoff’s front groups. Reed and Abramoff's friendship goes back to their College Republican days in the early 1980s.
In 2003, Abramoff bragged to executives at conglomerate Tyco International Ltd , according to the Washington Post, that through his close relationship to DeLay and the White House, he could help Tyco fight tax liabilities imposed by a Democrat-sponsored bill to penalize companies that moved offshore to evade federal taxes. A number of companies that had moved corporate offices to places like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, including Tyco, hired an army of lobbyists, including Abramoff's firm, to convince the Republicans to ultimately kill the bill.
Abramoff's connection to the White House may have been, along with Safavian, through Karl Rove. Rove had hired Abramoff's former personal assistant Susan Ralston in 2001. Incidentally, Ralston also had previously worked for Ralph Reed. Despite wide public support for penalizing companies like Tyco, the Abramoff’s army of lobbyists also succeeded in convincing President Bush to express strong opposition to the penalties.
This Republican/Abramoff scandal shows that their style of wielding power and shameless exchanges of corporate cash for political favors is a cancer that has infected Washington. The short-term solution is that it must be cut out with serious and thorough criminal and ethics investigations, resignations and indictments, and a hand over of power in November 2006.
Defenders of the Republicans claim that their corrupt leaders shouldn’t be judged so harshly because everyone in Washington is dirty. This cynical excuse mocks democracy and attempts to justify a systematic abuse of power, especially after the Republican Party fought and defeated reforms that would have tried to limit the glut of corporate cash on Capitol Hill.
--Contact Joel Wendland at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.
