A continuation of
the Russian Adventures of Tom DeLay, a story ripped from
the headlines!
After the Scanlon emails and the Ralph Reed nonsense, we can pretty much put the right's Christ cult bullshit to bed. They don't believe this shit, they just use people who do.
But I still, personally, find it more than a little sad when I find an example of someone who got taken. I dunno, it's a matter of temperament. It's probably what kept me from being a rightwinger despite the fact that I'm a bloody-minded misanthrope.
Anyhoo,
here's the sad sack in question:
E-mails released in the course of a Senate investigation into Abramoff confirm that he had Russian clients. In one, he mentions receiving payments from unnamed Russians. In another, he wrote that he was surprised that unnamed Russians often came to the United States and visited his luxury suite at FedExField, the Washington Redskins' stadium.
''The Russians, oddly, came quite a bit," Abramoff wrote. ''Weird."
One reason may be that the Russians helped pay for the suite through a now-defunct Abramoff-related nonprofit group called the US Family Network.
That group, established by an Abramoff colleague, was supposed to provide money to evangelical Christian charities.
But much of its money went to other Abramoff's friends, and some of it went to pay for Abramoff's luxury suite at FedExField, according to the group's former president, a church pastor in Frederick, Md., named Christopher Geeslin.
Geeslin said he was told by the group's founder that Russian investors gave $1 million to US Family Network, a link first reported by The Washington Post last year.
At first, Geeslin said, he could not believe the Russians would want to donate $1 million. Then, he said, he learned that Abramoff was escorting them to Capitol Hill.
''The Russians came over and Abramoff was ushering them around town," Geeslin said. ''I said: 'Man, this is true. It is just incredible.' "
'A shell operation'
Geeslin, who said Abramoff personally thanked him for paying for the FedExField suite, said he now feels ''duped" into heading the US Family Network.
''We had no idea it was just a shell operation for Abramoff," Geeslin said, referring to himself and other volunteer board members. He said he thought the money would be used for evangelical purposes.
''We were stupid enough to believe everything," he said.
That, for me, is a bigger metaphor than Cheney's shotgun. Yes, you were stupid enough to believe it. I've been saying that for years, absolutely fucking years.
I finally found one who admits it.
You poor sonofabitch, I pity you. You were the Blessed Virgin Mary doll they were hiding the heroin in, I guess.
So, let's see who this poor sonofabitch was facilitating. Let me give you the short version:
Russians bought Tom DeLay's vote to get them more IMF money.
Via Yglesias we find this Newsweek article from mid-April of last year:
Aides to DeLay insist he was in the dark about the Russian money behind the trip. But one conservative think-tank analyst, Michael Waller, was aggressively trying to warn congressional staffers about the Naftasib connection. Even after the trip, he continued to press them. The excursion was "bankrolled by influence peddlers tied to [the then] Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin," Waller wrote in a bulletin faxed and e-mailed to congressional staffers shortly after the trip.
Yglesias also points to
this Kommersant article, dated August 20, 2004, which reads in part, "In August 1997, NaftaSib paid for the Moscow leg of US House of Representatives leader Tom DeLay's trip to Moscow."
Apparently, everyone knew except DeLay. Right.
So, what were they buying from Tom DeLay? Hopefully nothing involving his daughter in a hot tub.
The answer goes from the very mundane to the very interesting, in a Laugh-In kind of way. First, the mundane:
Former Abramoff associates and documents in the hands of federal prosecutors state that Nevskaya and Koulakovsky sought Abramoff's help at the time in securing various favors from the U.S. government, including congressional earmarks or federal grants for their modular-home construction firm near Moscow and the construction of a fossil-fuel plant in Israel. None appears to have been obtained by their firm.
Former DeLay employees say Koulakovsky and Nevskaya met with him on multiple occasions. The Russians also frequently used Abramoff's skyboxes at local sports stadiums -- as did Kaplan, according to sources and a 2001 e-mail Abramoff wrote to another client.
Three sources familiar with Abramoff's activities on their behalf say that the two Russians -- who knew the head of the Russian energy giant Gazprom and had invested heavily in that firm -- partly wanted just to be seen with a prominent American politician as a way of bolstering their credibility with the Russian government and their safety on Moscow's streets. The Russian oil and gas business at the time had a Wild West character, and its executives worried about extortion and kidnapping threats. The anxieties of Nevskaya and Koulakovsky were not hidden; like many other business people, they traveled in Moscow with guards armed with machine guns.
Influence peddling and status-seekers. Nothing much to report here. Certainly nothing by DC standards. But then the fun begins:
... of the former associates, a Frederick, Md., pastor named Christopher Geeslin who served as the U.S. Family Network's director or president from 1998 to 2001, said Buckham further told him in 1999 that the payment was meant to influence DeLay's vote in 1998 on legislation that helped make it possible for the IMF to bail out the faltering Russian economy and the wealthy investors there.
"Ed told me, 'This is the way things work in Washington,' " Geeslin said. "He said the Russians wanted to give the money first in cash." Buckham, he said, orchestrated all the group's fundraising and spending and rarely informed the board about the details. Buckham and his attorney, Laura Miller, did not reply to repeated requests for comment on this article.
The IMF funding legislation was a contentious issue in 1998. The Russian stock market fell steeply in April and May, and the government in Moscow announced on June 18 -- just a week before the $1 million check was sent by the London law firm -- that it needed $10 billion to $15 billion in new international loans.
House Republican leaders had expressed opposition through that spring to giving the IMF the money it could use for new bailouts, decrying what they described as previous destabilizing loans to other countries. The IMF and its Western funders, meanwhile, were pressing Moscow, as a condition of any loan, to increase taxes on major domestic oil companies such as Gazprom, which had earlier defaulted on billions of dollars in tax payments.
And, just when things seemed at their darkest ... ENTER THE BUGMAN!!!
On Aug. 18, 1998, the Russian government devalued the ruble and defaulted on its treasury bills. But DeLay, appearing on "Fox News Sunday" on Aug. 30 of that year, criticized the IMF financing bill, calling the replenishment of its funds "unfortunate" because the IMF was wrongly insisting on a Russian tax increase. "They are trying to force Russia to raise taxes at a time when they ought to be cutting taxes in order to get a loan from the IMF. That's just outrageous," DeLay said.
In the end, the Russian legislature refused to raise taxes, the IMF agreed to lend the money anyway, and DeLay voted on Sept. 17, 1998, for a foreign aid bill containing new funds to replenish the IMF account. DeLay's spokesman said the lawmaker "makes decisions and sets legislative priorities based on good policy and what is best for his constituents and the country." He added: "Mr. DeLay has very firm beliefs, and he fights very hard for them."
And where was our pious dupe all this time? Paying DeLay's wife to do nothing, of course:
Throughout this period, the U.S. Family Network was paying a monthly fee of at least $10,000 to Buckham and Alexander Strategy Group for general "consulting," according to a former Buckham associate and a copy of the contract. While DeLay's wife drew a monthly salary from the lobbying firm, she did not work at its offices in the townhouse on Capitol Hill, according to former Buckham associates.