Abramoff and AIPAC-spies defense attorney in position in Delaware US Attorney office
Thu Apr 26, 2007 at 01:08:36 PM PDT
As was first noted here in my diary earlier this week, an attorney resigned from defending the two former AIPAC officials in their spying case to move into the US Attorney office in Delaware. Currently, Mr Keith M. Rosen is the head of the Criminal Division in the District of Delaware, and I anticipate that the current US Attorney in that office, Colm Connolly, will either resign--and, as has been rumored, run for the Biden Senate seat--or be fired so that Rosen can be moved into the head position, on an 'interim basis' to avoid the scrutiny of a Senate confirmation. I can not imagine a scenario where Rosen would be confirmed.
This diary introduces you to our new assistant, and, I predict, your new US Attorney for the District of Delaware.
I. Relation with Jack Abramoff
Mr Rosen defended Jack Abramoff, and appeared with Abramoff in his 2004 Senate testimony.
One of Abramoff's many felonies involved Abramoff's receiving money from one group, misrepresenting what the money would be used for, and then Abramoff using the money to fund another of his nefarious schemes.
A pet project that both Tom Delay and Jack Abramoff enjoyed funneling illegal funds into was Abramoff's Capital Athletic Foundation, a foundation whose marketed goal was a source of funds to enhance the lives of 'inner-city youths' with social programs. In actuality, the funds were diverted to other interests. This from Newsweek in an article titled, Fund-Raising: Take It to the (West) Bank: Money meant for the inner city went to fight the intifada. What donors to Jack Abramoff's charity didn't know:
The pitch worked especially well among a group of Indian tribes who, having opened up lucrative gaming casinos, had hired Abramoff to protect their interests in Washington. In 2002 alone, records show, three Indian tribes donated nearly $1.1 million to the Capital Athletic Foundation. But now, NEWSWEEK has learned, investigators probing Abramoff's finances have found some of the money meant for inner-city kids went instead to fight the Palestinian intifada. More than $140,000 of foundation funds were actually sent to the Israeli West Bank where they were used by a Jewish settler to mobilize against the Palestinian uprising. Among the expenditures: purchases of camouflage suits, sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, a thermal imager and other material described in foundation records as "security" equipment. The FBI, sources tell NEWSWEEK, is now examining these payments as part of a larger investigation to determine if Abramoff defrauded his Indian tribe clients. The tribal donors are outraged. "This is almost like outer-limits bizarre," says Henry Buffalo, a lawyer for the Saginaw Chippewa Indians who contributed $25,000 to the Capital Athletic Foundation at Abramoff's urging. "The tribe would never have given money for this."
Abramoff, a legendary lobbyist particularly close to DeLay, is also a fierce supporter of Israel—"a super-Zionist," one associate says. That may explain why Abramoff's paramilitary gear ended up in the town of Beitar Illit, a sprawling ultra-Orthodox outpost whose residents have occasionally tangled with their Palestinian neighbors. Yitzhak Pindrus, the settlement's mayor, says that several years ago the town was confronting mounting security problems. "They [the Palestinians] were throwing stones, they were throwing Molotov cocktails," Pindrus says. Abramoff's connection to the town was Schmuel Ben-Zvi, an American emigre who, the lobbyist told associates, was an old friend he knew from Los Angeles. Capital Athletic Foundation public tax records make no mention of Ben-Zvi. But they do show payments to "Kollel Ohel Tiferet" in Israel, a group for which there is no public listing and which the town's mayor said he never heard of.
II. Relations with AIPAC
Please see my previous diary, Gonzales and dropping the charges in US v Rosen? The impact of not doing so on the Bush Crime Family, to read about some of the relevant details of that case.
III. The link between Rosen, Abramoff, and AIPAC
Unfortunately, I do not believe that the extent of the links between Rosen, his client, Abramoff, and AIPAC will be uncovered in the near future. Though Abramoff and his minions in Congress are either in prison, or indicted, it is doubtful that the any overlapping of those crimes and the powerful AIPAC lobby will be touched by a Democratic Congress--or, by a Democratic Administration (especially if Senator Clinton is victorious). AIPAC is simply too powerful a source of funding for Presidential candidates to be ruffled by either side. Although the organization is considered to be ...."controlled by right-wing, rich Jewish neo-conservatives", our Democratic candidates attend and speak at their functions.
IV. Abramoff and the US Attorney scandals, generally.
It remains to be seen to what extent, if any, Rosen may play in future investigations of his former client in other offices throughout the country. Abramoff's filthy slime is covering the 'transfer' of the US Attorney in Guam, as documented in a previous diary.
A future diary will discuss the impact Abramoff had in having a Justice Department Special Report on the security situation in Guam and the Marinas Islands, made at the request of then US Attorney Black, after 9.11.
Suffice it to say, the slime generally collects at the bottom of the barrel, and with any luck, the past and future crimes of this filthy miscreant will, for the most part, be uncovered.
NOTE: This is not an I/P diary, and I do not desire it be hijacked as one by either side of that debate. This is a political diary that describes the machinations of the Bush Crime Family and its Justice Department, and nothing more. Therefore, there will be no responses available to anyone trying to hijack this diary as an I/P issue.
Tags: Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay, Keith M. Rosen, AIPAC, Organized Crime, US Attorney Scandal
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