If you're a Republican, you're probably buying all manner of pills and potions for your "nerves" these days. And you're starting to dread every news cycle.
Saturday was a very bad, what with all the Tom DeLay news that story in Time about Duke Cunningham wearing a wire, that LA Times story about Doolittle and Pombo and the endless stories about the growing Abramoff scandal, Republicans must be suffering cases of the vapors to outright panic attacks.
Then there is the Alexander Strategy Group and today's New York Times that connects the growing GOP Endless Corruption scandal to the firm and its ties to DeLay and Abramoff. The article is loaded with new details and more bad news for the GOP.
More on the jump...
Now
I've written about the Abramoff scandal for a long time and Ed Buckham and the
Alexander Strategy Group have come up many times. Of all the actors on K Street, ASG has more connections to Abramoff than even Greenberg Traurig and Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds (Jack's old employers). Why?
Well, because Tom, Jack and DeLay's former Chief of staff Ed Buckham created the firm:
The firm, Alexander Strategy Group, is of particular interest to investigators because it was founded by Edwin A. Buckham, a close friend of Mr. DeLay's and his former chief of staff, and has been a lucrative landing spot for several former members of the DeLay staff, people who are directly involved in the case have said. [snip]
The firm openly promoted the idea that it could deliver access to Mr. DeLay, who has denied any wrongdoing but abruptly announced Saturday that he would not try to regain his leadership post. Now the very connections with Mr. DeLay that formed the backbone of Alexander Strategy, put together with Mr. Abramoff's help, have put the future of the firm in doubt.
One those involved in the case talking about ASG is certainly Abramoff. Another is Mike Scanlon, who was (as they say) present at the creation of the firm. Back in 1999 mike worked with Ed to help Enron land the contract to build a power plant on Saipan. It was a hard and dirty battle. And it helped Mike stand out as the kind of go-getter Jack would need to expand his business.
Scanlon's final financial disclosure form for his work with DeLay reports $10,000 from the ASG as a consulting fee paid to Mike "during a break in service". Tony Rudy is another former DeLay staffer and ASG employee who is reportedly talking with the Feds about a possible plea deal of his own. All this talk puts ASG into the limelight and that is more bad news for the GOP:
While doing business with lobbyists is routine for most lawmakers, investigators are looking at the extent to which Mr. DeLay and other lawmakers may have accepted trips, campaign donations and other favors from Alexander Strategy, and in turn tried to help the business. [snip]
Mr. Buckham and the firm also shared clients - among them an entity in Malaysia and the Choctaw Indian tribe in Mississippi - with Mr. Abramoff, who in his plea agreement admitted to using corrupting tactics with lawmakers on behalf of his clients. Mr. Abramoff also admitted to having defrauded his Indian clients of millions of dollars. At one point, Mr. Buckham even sought to hire Mr. Abramoff himself, participants in the case said.
Mr. Buckham and at least one member of his firm worked with domestic and overseas clients who prosecutors suspect helped funnel money and perks to Mr. DeLay, his fund-raising operations and other lawmakers in ways intended to curry favor with the Republican leadership.
And at one time, Americans for a Republican Majority, or Armpac, the leadership committee that raised money for Mr. DeLay, was run out of the offices of Alexander Strategy [snip]
The firm's name surfaced at the periphery of the corruption investigation into Representative Randy Cunningham [snip]
The successful history of Alexander Strategy since its founding in the late 1990's offers a window into the nexus of Mr. Abramoff, Mr. DeLay and the lobbying world over the last decade or so of Republican control of Congress.
And back on July 31, 1999 the National Journal reported on the birth of ASG:
In the past several years, plenty of top aides to House Republican leaders have bolted Capitol Hill for high-paying careers as lobbyists. Edwin A. Buckham, a former chief of staff to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, is--finally--starting to do the same. Although he left DeLay's office in November 1997, Buckham has just recently registered to lobby. His first clients are the Enron Corp. and the Nuclear Energy Institute. Enron has retained Buckham to help with the energy deregulation issues on the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. [snip] He accompanied the Majority Whip on a trip there over the Christmas holidays in 1997. Meanwhile, Buckham will lobby for the NEI on nuclear-waste issues.
Since leaving Capitol Hill two years ago, Buckham has done political consulting for DeLay and other House Republicans. He has also worked for ARMPAC, DeLay's leadership political action committee, and the Rely on Your Beliefs Fund, or the RoyB Fund, the new leadership PAC that House Chief Deputy Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., established in May. All these connections should help Buckham's budding K Street career. But Buckham, who runs his own firm, the Alexander Strategy Group, emphasizes that he expects to spend only about a quarter of his time lobbying.
Now in the early days of ASG it was ran out of Buckham's "house" in the Capital Hill neighborhood of DC. This looks like the same house that the Washington Post wrote about last weekend:
The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.
During its five-year existence, the U.S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret. [snip]
But the records show that the tiny U.S. Family Network, which never had more than one full-time staff member, spent comparatively little money on public advocacy or education projects. Although established as a nonprofit organization, it paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to Buckham and his lobbying firm, Alexander Strategy Group. [snip]
Some of the U.S. Family Network's revenue was used to pay for radio ads attacking vulnerable Democratic lawmakers in 1999; other funds were used to finance the cash purchase of a townhouse three blocks from DeLay's congressional office. DeLay's associates at the time called it "the Safe House."
DeLay made his own fundraising telephone pitches from the townhouse's second-floor master suite every few weeks, according to two former associates. Other rooms in the townhouse were used by Alexander Strategy Group, Buckham's newly formed lobbying firm, and Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), DeLay's leadership committee.
They paid modest rent to the U.S. Family Network, which occupied a single small room in the back.
Just imagine the TV sitcom that could be based on that house (perhaps Tom's House would be a nice title). Anyway back to the NYTs:
And Mr. DeLay, so intertwined with the lobbying world that his extensive network of allies and former aides scattered throughout town is nicknamed "DeLay Inc.," responded more quickly to calls from Alexander Strategy than he did for any other firm, former aides of his said.
One element prosecutors are trying to understand is what role Mr. DeLay played in sending business to the company. There is evidence, one participant in the case said, that it was "you hire these guys because Tom DeLay tells you to." [snip]
As a result of Mr. Buckham's ties with Mr. DeLay and Mr. Abramoff, investigators are "keenly interested" in him, especially in connection with deals he may have brokered with Mr. DeLay and other lawmakers after going into the private sector, one participant in the case said. [snip]
Alexander Strategy's name has also surfaced in the course of a corruption investigation that implicates the defense lobbyist Brent Wilkes, who is an unnamed co-conspirator in the criminal case against former Representative Cunningham. Mr. Cunningham pleaded guilty in December to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from Mr. Wilkes and others. Mr. Wilkes's firm, Group W, also hired Alexander Strategy to do lobbying work, and Mr. DeLay used a plane partly owned by Mr. Wilkes. [snip]
Mr. DeLay's political action committee paid Alexander Strategy more than $300,000 for fund-raising and consulting services from 2000 to 2003, according to the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit group that tracks money in politics. In addition to Mr. Rudy, the firm also employed Karl Gallant, who headed Mr. DeLay's political action committee.
Abramoff, Cunningham, DeLay, ASG, etc., etc.: it looks like the GOP culture of corruption is becoming undeniable. Now let's keep tracking this web of corruption back to individual office holders and official acts done in exchange for money and other gifts of value. EZ writer highlighted one of these stories today.
Many more will come. Bad news for the GOP. Good news for America.
Let's help. Pick a scandal thread and just follow the money...