I have been tracking the Republican Culture of Corruption for some time now. For almost three years, my Diaries have focused on the growing Jack Abramoff scandal. I think of this scandal as just a core sample taken from a glacier of Republican corruption. Drilling down a few feet over would hit Plamegate, Cunningham, Haliburton, Stephen Griles or any of the endless entry points into the Republican Culture of Corruption.
These days, almost any sample will be connected to the other scandals frozen in the interwoven layers of Corruption at the heart of the Gingrich/DeLay/Bush years.
Take the ongoing and breaking Prosecutor Purge story. It touches virtually all the scandals of the Bush years and the Gingrich/DeLay Congress. Running through this new scandal are dozens of threads that tie back to Jack Abramoff and his 25 years as a bag-man for the Republican Party.
We NEED an independent Special Prosecutor to unravel the intertwined scandals and reveal the truth.
A good place to start would be Abramoff...
Jack Abramoff was essentially a bag man for those Republicans who wanted to create one-party rule in the USA.
They have been working towards this goal since the late 1970s. Jack's key role was to get untraceable money into the system for off-the-books operations. Finding ways to wash a lot of money is a key requirement when hiding the source of funds flowing into the political system.
Jack had a bit role in the Iran-Contra scandal in his formative years. That was another effort to get off-the-books money into the system to free President Reagan from the constraints of Congressional oversight and US laws.
It was a system with three legs: guns, drugs and cash. Abramoff's genus was to add a fourth leg to the money washing stool: gambling.
Abramoff worked the system. He fixed elections. If it helped to build the power of the Party, he had no trouble supporting human trafficking, forced sex, forced abortions, and sweatshops. For Jack and his pals GOP values were always an illusion crafted for the rubes—never themselves.
And Jack was close with those in power. As he told Vanity Fair:
"Any important Republican who comes out and says they didn’t know me is almost certainly lying," he says. Such lies are not just, well, lies, but dumb to boot, he adds, for, as his own humiliations suggest, old e-mails never die; they just sit on hard drives, waiting to be subpoenaed and then to be leaked to the press. "This is not an age when you can run away from facts," he declares. "I had to deal with my records, and others will have to deal with theirs."
The Bush White House was among Jack’s pals. They went to bat for him. Repeatedly. And Jack helped them get untraceable funds into the US Political system for dirty tricks, illegal campaign ads, mailers, calls and stealth lobbying for pet projects of the powerful.
To move the money into the system, Jack worked with a collection of scoundrels, foreign and domestic. Sometimes they would get into a bit of trouble and attract the attention of a local Federal Prosecutor or a member of Congress. Then Jack would need some help.
The first line of defense was always Tom DeLay and the Republican Leadership in Congress. If the heat got too bad, then they turned to Bush and his Den of Thieves.
Several recent Diaries have noted the Bush Administrations effort to remove Guam based US Attorney Frederick A. Black back in 2002.
Gonzales has purged before by occams hatchet and Bush Removed Abramoff Prosecutor by filmgeek83 provide links and make the case that in light of the Prosecutor Purge the removal of Black deserves more scrutiny.
Last summer, the IG for the Department of Justice released a report on Black’s firing that concluded Abramoff was not involved in the firing. Paul Kiel over at TPM Muckraker summed up the findings of the report:
Jack Abramoff had wanted the guy canned, the report concludes, but even though he tried to take credit for Black's demotion when it happened, he didn't actually have anything to do with it.
I had problems with the report, and wrote a Diary about why: Abramoff's 10-1-2001 Email demands a Special Prosecutor. So, team Bush was going to fire Black regardless of Abramoff. Big deal, the report makes clear that Jack could have had him fired he needed to call in that favor. And with the recent developments, I’m not sure the IG’s report can be trusted. Another favor Jack wanted from Team Bush was to suppress a security assessment of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). The DoJ’s IG claimed the Jack did not learn about the report until May of 2002, but the 10-1-2001 email I wrote about had Jack focused on killing the report just weeks after 9-11. And he had the access to the DoJ and John Ashcroft to get it done.
It was finally release by Congressman George Miller last summer. And I wrote, WOW! No wonder Rove & Abramoff blocked the 2002 CNMI/Guam Security Report, to explain why Jack wanted any talk of security issues on Guam or the CNMI suppressed.
Money laundering is a big part of what Jack did for the GOP and the CNMI is a money washer’s paradise. The Bush White House was only too happy to help.
One of the heroes of the Prosecutor Purge story is Josh Marshall. He is reinventing journalism and it is exciting to watch.
Josh and his team have been on top of a number of stories with the same level of focus and depth they’ve brought to the US Attorney Scandal.
One story they’ve been on is the Abramoff Scandal. Here, Paul Kiel is the star. The TPM Muckraker reporting on Abramoff is outstanding. And on this subject, I have some idea of what I’m talking about.
Their reporting has placed Abramoff squarely in the White House, working with Rove, Melhman and the Bush Team. These links give a quick tutorial:
Needless to say, Jack had access. And his involvement intertwined with other scandals connected to the Prosecutor Purge, like the 2002 New Hampshire Phone Jamming Scandal. Once agian from the pages of TPM Muckraker:
Or the growing Duke Cunningham/Jerry Lewis/Brent Wilkes/Dusty Foggo scandal:
I’m sure that digging will yield more links and ways Abramoff weaves into the many scandals.
Guam is another case in point. Jack was running a stealth lobbying operation for a faction from the local Superior Court. Mindy Fothergill of KUAM News has done a lot of good reporting on the influence of Jack Abramoff on Guam. Over the weekend, KUAM linked to a PDF of 367 pages of documents related to the Abramoff/Guam lobbying case. And today, Mindy reported that Members of Congress are calling for a new investigation into Abramoff’s work on Guam and the CNMI:
Two House committee chairmen are calling for a broader investigation into former powerhouse and now convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his dealing's with Guam. California congressman George Miller has requested a congressional probe along with Virginia delegate Nick Rahall into the recent terminations of eight U.S. Attorneys and Abramoff's work with Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
George Miller has been demanding a special prosecutor to look into this case for some time.
Today, He renewed the call:
HOUSE COMMITTEE CHAIRMEN SAY PROBE OF FIRED U.S. ATTORNEYS SHOULD INCLUDE ABRAMOFF CASE
WASHINGTON - Two House committee chairman called today for the congressional probe into the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys to be widened to include the case of an acting U.S. Attorney demoted in 2002 after he began investigating the now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his dealings with Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).
Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the Education and Labor Committee chairman, and Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), the Natural Resources Committee chairman, have repeatedly pressed for a full investigation of Abramoff's dealings with the CNMI and its sweatshop industry and of the demotion of Fred Black, the then-acting U.S. Attorney for Guam and the CNMI.
Miller and Rahall said that what looked initially to them as another example of Abramoff's excesses as a corrupt lobbyist exploiting his deep ties to the Bush Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress might in fact be part of a widespread pattern of tampering with the work of U.S. Attorneys.
Press reports and leaked emails indicated that the Bush Administration may have replaced Black because he was conducting a criminal investigation of Abramoff and his clients, and because he favored insular area policies that Abramoff and his clients opposed. Abramoff also reportedly helped to quash a classified Justice Department report that Black requested on security threats posed by CNMI's immigration policy.
At the lawmakers' request, the Justice Department's Inspector General investigated the case and found numerous political contacts between Abramoff and Administration officials but reported that Black's replacement had not been improper. Miller and Rahall believe it is now appropriate to revisit the case.
"We want to know whether high level Bush Administration officials tampered with a U.S. Attorney's investigation of a corrupt lobbyist," said Miller. "Black was trying to secure our borders and root out corruption while Abramoff was wining and dining the Justice Department. We need to know what happened in this case."
In their letter to the House and Senate Judiciary Committee chairs, Miller and Rahall asked for their current probe to be expanded to include the case of Fred Black.
"In light of more recent revelations about political interference with the work of other U.S. Attorneys... it is necessary now to re-examine the case as it may represent the beginning of a pattern of behavior by some members of Congress and officials in the Bush Administration to politicize the work of U.S. Attorneys and to quash their independence."
We need to support Congressman Miller on the call for a Special Prosecutor.
And in addition to Frederick Black, any investigation should take a look at the case of Noel Hillman the Abramoff prosecutor Bush pulled off the case and made a Judge just weeks after Abramoff plead Guilty in January 2006.
At the time the event was covered by several Daily Kos Diaries:
Perhaps Purging Prosecutors is just one of the tools the Bush White House uses to block investigations of their crimes. Sometimes they may move one to the Bench as a way to slow or block an ongoing investigation—an especially useful tool when dealing with the complex crimes at the heart of the Republican Culture of Corruption.
We need to support Congressman Miller on the call for a Special Prosecutor.
Here is what you can do to help.
- Get Your Congresswoman or Congressman to sign onto the letter to AG Gonzales. There should be at least 235 signatures demanding an Abramoff Special Prosecutor. More if some nervous Republicans join in. Call your Congressman and ask/demand that they sign the Miller/Rahill letter (PDF). If enough members sign the letter, this will take on a life of its own.
- Call the White House and the US Attorney General and demand they appoint a Special Prosecutor.
- Write letters, contact the press, call talk shows, post comments, and otherwise promote this effort.
- Research. Follow the money. Find the quid pro quos. Dig into the ties of the GOP to CNMI and Guam. Dig into the many other aspects of this glacier of scandal.
- Get out the truth and hold the GOP accountable in 2007 and 2008. Perhaps the GOP will want to explain to voters why they wanted to kill the Abramoff and other corruption investigation. We should force the question.
Let’s push this hard.
Cheers!