Tom Delay indicted, to step down as Majority Leader...

[Joseph]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Now that Republican House Speaker Delay will be going on trial, Republican Senate Majority Leader Frisk is under investigation, prominant Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff is under investigation (he's the designated fall guy who will be sold down river), the CIA leak investigation is almost complete (come stand trial Karl Rove), and Bush's choice for the OMB's Procurement Director has been arrested and indicted... Can anyone honestly deny the Republican leadership isn't the most corrupt group to have power in this country since... well... Nixon or Harding (who were also Republicans).

He was not the Speaker. Hatcher (Spelling) is.

[Boris Godunov]

Hastert.

[Drake Tungsten]

Can anyone honestly deny the Republican leadership isn't the most corrupt group to have power in this country since... well... Nixon or Harding (who were also Republicans).

They're obviously corrupt. Then again, Clinton was giving out pardons in exchange for campaign contributions, among other things. A pox on both their houses...

[Dinner]

Bloomburg is reporting the investigation into Delay's money laundering machine is widening and it looks like most of the big Republicans had their fingers in this cookie jar.

Abramoff Probe May Threaten Leading Republicans as It Expands

By Jonathan D. Salant

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The widening investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff is moving beyond the confines of tawdry influence-peddling to threaten leading figures in the Republican hierarchy that dominates Washington.

This week's arrest of David Safavian, the former head of procurement at the Office of Management and Budget, in connection with a land deal involving Abramoff brings the probe to the White House for the first time.

Safavian once worked with Abramoff at one lobbying firm and was a partner of Grover Norquist, a national Republican strategist with close ties to the White House, at another. Safavian traveled to Scotland in 2002 with Abramoff, Representative Robert Ney of Ohio and another top Republican organizer, Ralph Reed, southeast regional head of President George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who once called Abramoff ``one of my closest and dearest friends,'' already figures prominently in the investigation of the lobbyist's links to Republicans. The probe may singe other lawmakers with ties to Abramoff, such as Republican Senator Conrad Burns of Montana, as well as Ney.

``These people all shared transactions together,'' said former House Democratic counsel Stan Brand, now a partner in the Washington-based Brand Law Group. ``That's always something that worries defense lawyers.''

Nervous Republicans

Some Republicans acknowledge they are nervous. ``Sure there's a concern,'' said former Representative Jack Quinn of New York, who's now president of Cassidy & Associates, a Washington lobbying firm. ``But like everyone else, we have to wait and see where the investigation goes.''

Abramoff, 46, a top fund-raiser for Bush's re-election campaign, is under investigation by a government task force consisting of the Justice Department's public integrity section, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Interior Department's inspector general. The Senate Indian Affairs Committee is conducting another inquiry.

Safavian, 38, who in the 1990s worked with Abramoff at the Washington-based lobbying firm of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, was charged Sept. 19 by the Justice Department with making false statements about whether he had any dealings with the lobbyist in the course of Abramoff's attempts to obtain government land. He was also charged with obstructing an investigation. His lawyer, Barbara Van Gelder, told the Washington Post he would vigorously contest the charges.

Safavian took the Scotland trip three years ago aboard a chartered jet. Abramoff was paying for the plane, Safavian said in an e-mail to the ethics office of his employer at the time, the U.S. General Services Administration.

Abramoff's Network

Abramoff's web of connections runs deep in the Republican Party. DeLay, 58, has participated in at least three overseas trips he sponsored; Democrats have demanded that the House ethics committee investigate whether DeLay violated House rules prohibiting lawmakers from accepting trips financed by lobbyists.

One of those trips was to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory. DeLay has opposed legislation requiring the Marianas to follow U.S. minimum wage and labor laws. Abramoff was lobbying for the Marianas at the time.

Two former DeLay aides, spokesman Michael Scanlon and deputy chief of staff William Jarrell, worked with Abramoff. Jarrell later was part of Bush's transition team focusing on the Interior Department, the parent agency for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, at a time when Abramoff was representing casino-owning tribes. The Senate Indian Affairs Committee is investigating Abramoff's and Scanlon's work for the tribes.

Diverted Funds

Abramoff diverted funds paid to him by Indian tribe clients that were supposed to be used on lobbying activities to a variety of personal projects, according to testimony and e-mails released at a Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing. The personal projects ranged from an Orthodox Jewish academy to an Israeli sniper school; some money also went to pay off a personal debt, according to the testimony and e-mails.

Abramoff and Scanlon took in more than $66 million in fees from 2001 to 2004 from tribal clients, according to Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who chairs the Indian affairs panel. In one e-mail released by the Senate committee, Abramoff wrote to Scanlon, ``I have to meet with the monkeys from the Choctaw tribal counsel.''

Abramoff also has a relationship with Ney, the Ohio congressman. Ney's former chief of staff, Neil Volz, worked with Abramoff at the Miami-based law firm of Greenberg Traurig LLP.

Reopening a Casino

Ney, 51, in 2002 agreed to insert language in federal legislation to allow an Abramoff client, the Tigua Indians of El Paso, Texas, to reopen a casino closed by state authorities. The provision didn't make it into the final measure.

In 2000, Ney placed two statements in the Congressional Record in support of Abramoff's purchase of SunCruz Casino Ltd., a casino ship company. Abramoff was indicted by a federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in August on wire fraud charges in connection with the purchase.

Burns, 70, who is up for re-election in 2006, has been the subject of an advertising campaign by the Montana Democratic Party criticizing him for receiving $136,500 in donations from Indian tribe clients of Abramoff and Scanlon from 2001 to 2004. Burns in 2003 pushed for a wealthy Michigan Indian tribe, one of Abramoff's clients, to receive a $3 million federal grant.

Two former aides of Burns, Will Brooke and Shawn Vasell, went to work with Abramoff at Greenberg Traurig.

Burns spokesman Grant Toomey said the request for the grant came from the Michigan congressional delegation.

An Offer to Meet

Ney spokesman Brian Walsh said, ``The congressman has sent two letters to the House ethics committee as far back as last year offering to meet with them. To date, there has been no response.'' Walsh said there have been no inquiries from the Justice Department ``on any matter related to Mr. Abramoff.''

DeLay spokesman Kevin Madden said the majority leader has asked the ethics committee ``to look into everything in order to exonerate him.''

Norquist declined through a spokesman to comment. Reed didn't respond to a request for comment.

Ed Patru, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Abramoff won't be an issue in next year's mid-term congressional elections. ``No member of Congress has ever been kicked out of office because of an allegation against another member or another lobbyist,'' Patru said. ``Democrats are trying to nationalize the 2006 elections. Their approach has been to throw everything up against the wall and hope something sticks.''

Gambling in Alabama

Abramoff's links to the party go beyond lawmakers. He worked with Reed, a former director of the Republican-oriented Christian Coalition, and Norquist to kill an effort to bring legalized gambling to Alabama.

At Abramoff's behest, one of his tribal clients, whose casino could have been hurt by the competition, sent money to Norquist's anti-tax group, Americans for Tax Reform, which in turn wrote a check to help Reed's effort.

One of Norquist's former partners in another venture was Safavian. The two men worked at Janus-Merritt Strategies LLC, a Washington lobbying firm that was later sold to a Richmond, Virginia-based law firm, Williams Mullen.

``Safavian is a small fish, but in combination with Abramoff and his ties to Norquist and DeLay, it presents a very inviting target to Democrats,'' said Ross Baker, a political scientist who studies congressional politics at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Safavian was one of three former Abramoff associates who joined the Bush administration. Another was Patrick Pizzella, assistant secretary of labor for administration and management. The third was Susan Ralston, special assistant to White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Jonathan D. Salant in Washington jsalant@bloomberg.net.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=IN7A1S0UQVI9

[Ramo]

Why? Does Blunt not like Hastert?

Dreier was seen as a place-holder for DeLay, without the power base within the Republican caucus to hold on to the job against DeLay's wishes. That doesn't really characterize Blunt.

The smart thing to do would've been to get someone squeaky clean like Chris Shays (rather than a corrupt hack like Blunt) as Majority Leader.

a) I don't understand this artificial distinction between parliamentary systems and the US system. The US is a parliamentary system, and the operation of the legislative branch is fairly similar in US and Westminster.

I think that lotm meant PR systems.

[MrFun]

This is depressing.

[Boris Godunov]

Blunt is as tained as DeLay, for all intents and purposes. His links to Abramoff are already surfacing. What a lousy choice for the GOP.

[Dinner]

The Ambromoff corruption investigation will continue and as I posted articles before nearly all of the top Republicans were taking money from Arbromoff & Delay. Delay had the key to converting illegal bribes into technically legal "campaign contributions" so he could buy the absolute loyalty of the junior Republicans. If you didn't vote the way Delay told you to vote then you got cut off from the magic money machine.

Where did all of this money come from? Simple, Corporations who wanted special laws or favors paid Delay enough money and they got to write their own laws. Straight forward Republican corruption as described since the beginning of the Bush adminstration yet people were to cowardly to print it without criminal charges. Now those criminal charges are a reality and the lemings in the main stream media will attack like a pack of wolves.

To bad they weren't brave enough to do their own leg work.

[Drake Tungsten]

Well, it seems that Earle doesn't actually have anything to convict Delay with. So, we'll probably get the worst of both worlds; months of partisan fighting and spinning and the eventual return of Tom Delay to power. Just great...

[Dinner]

Funny, the Republicans spin originally was this is all a meaningless Democratic attack and our great leader would never commit a crime. Then when it became clear Delay had commited a crime and was indicted the Republican misinformation machine said this was all an unjustified partisan attack and there is no basis for attacking our great leader.

We shall see but the Republican spin is garbage as Earle has gone after twice as many Democrats as he has Republicans in his career. He is far from a partisan hack and instead seems to just be a man who hates corrupt politicians. Let us see if he can outlast the right wing smear machine though.

[DanS]

prominant Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff

He goes both ways. Don't try to foist him entirely on the GOP.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
DeLay and his minions already have latched onto their talking point in desperation: That Earle is a fanatic partisan.

Of course, the fact that Earle has prosecuted twice as many Democrats as he has Republicans in his career throws a bit of a wrench into that meme.

To his target audience (ie one member of the jury) this is proof that Earle is a partisan nutjob, as everyone knows that Democrats are five times more corrupt than Republicans.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Now that Republican House Speaker Delay will be going on trial, Republican Senate Majority Leader Frisk is under investigation, prominant Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff is under investigation (he's the designated fall guy who will be sold down river), the CIA leak investigation is almost complete (come stand trial Karl Rove), and Bush's choice for the OMB's Procurement Director has been arrested and indicted... Can anyone honestly deny the Republican leadership isn't the most corrupt group to have power in this country since... well... Nixon or Harding (who were also Republicans).

The executive so far isn't all that remarkable for a two term presidency in terms of corruption.

Also, Abramoff isn't a designated fall guy, he's simply so disgusting that no one even thought of standing up for him that wasn't already in business with him. He's useless as a fall guy because he's always been a broker, though apparantly never an honest one. Seriously those paranoid Dem sites really lower the quality of your posts. People may have thrown him to the wolves, but no one is going to be saved because Abramoff is going to take the heat off of them.

Oh, and I'm very pleased to see Delay going down. It couldn't happen to a bigger *******.

[Drake Tungsten]

Let us see if he can outlast the right wing smear machine though.

They don't even need to fire up the smear machine on this one; Earle's past behavior has already given them all the ammunition they need.

Oh, and I'm very pleased to see Delay going down. It couldn't happen to a bigger *******.

I remain skeptical about DeLay actually being brought down by this, but I approve of your general sentiment.

[DanS]

I think the WaPo's editorial on this is a good one. However, there are a couple of things that I don't agree with. For instance, pointing out that a trade group is hiring disproportionately from the other party for political spots is just fine with me.

The DeLay Indictment

Thursday, September 29, 2005; Page A22

YESTERDAY'S indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on charges of conspiring to violate Texas campaign finance laws won't come as a surprise to anyone who's watched the Texas Republican operate over the years. In his drive to consolidate Republican power, Mr. DeLay has consistently pushed, and at times stepped over, ethical boundaries.

He is, as we said last year, an ethical recidivist -- unabashed about using his legislative and political power to reward supporters and punish opponents, and brazen in how he links campaign contributions and political actions. Among the DeLay activities that have drawn disapproval from the House ethics committee: threatening a trade association for daring to hire a Democrat; enlisting federal aviation officials to hunt for Democratic state legislators trying to foil his Texas redistricting plan; and holding a golf fundraiser for energy companies just as the House was to consider energy legislation.

Nonetheless, at least on the evidence presented so far, the indictment of Mr. DeLay by a state prosecutor in Texas gives us pause. The charge concerns the activities of Texans for a Republican Majority (TRMPAC), a political action committee created by Mr. DeLay and his aides to orchestrate the GOP's takeover of the Texas legislature in 2002. The issue is whether Mr. DeLay and his political aides illegally used the group to evade the state's ban on corporate contributions to candidates. The indictment alleges that TRMPAC took $155,000 in corporate contributions and then sent a check for $190,000 to the national Republican Party's "soft money" arm. The national committee then wrote $190,000 in checks from its noncorporate accounts to seven Texas candidates. Perhaps most damning, TRMPAC dictated the precise amount and recipients of those donations.

This was an obvious end run around the corporate contribution rule. The more difficult question is whether it was an illegal end run -- or, to be more precise, one so blatantly illegal that it amounts to a criminal felony rather than a civil violation. For Mr. DeLay to be convicted, prosecutors will have to show not only that he took part in the dodge but also that he knew it amounted to a violation of state law -- rather than the kind of clever money-trade that election lawyers engineer all the time.

Mr. DeLay's spokesman said this month that "to his knowledge all activities were properly reviewed and approved by lawyers" for TRMPAC. If so, the criminal law seems like an awfully blunt instrument to wield against Mr. DeLay. If not, we look forward to seeing the evidence. In the meantime, as required by party rules, Mr. DeLay has stepped aside as majority leader. Whatever happens in the criminal case, perhaps this latest controversy will cause his colleagues to rethink whether he is, in fact, the person they really want as their leader.