Perhaps you saw the Rachel Maddow show the other night when she interviewed a professional weasel named Tim Phillips. Or perhaps you read bhfrik’s Diary about her talk with this bottom feeder.
It was a powerful segment. And of course Phillips has a connection to Jack Abramoff. Maddow just scratched the surface of that relationship. It goes pretty deep. When Phillips was C of S for Rep. Bob Goodlatte (VA-06), he was talking with Team Abramoff about taking an all expense paid junket to the Marianas Islands. He left his job as a Hill staffer in 1997 to work with Abramoff’s BFF Ralph Reed. I suspect he took the junket. And it is a safe bet that he owes Abramoff for his job with Reed and his current role as weasel for hire.
Tim Phillips is just another spawn of the Culture of Corruption living and profiting off of the destruction of our Democracy. While, it is good to see Rachel Maddow call him out, I think the real story is being missed.
To the jump...
Tim Phillips has links to Abramoff that go back to the 1980s. So do many, many Republicans in office and in the think tanks, front groups, lobby shops and back rooms of Washington.
These folks are everywhere in Washington and the real story is that they have all survived the Abamoff scandal.
When this scandal broke over five years ago it threatened the entire structure of money trading, influence peddling and corruption that had taken over the Legislative process. Credible reports had 60 Members of Congress and the Senate with exposure to the scandal—and many, many more staffers. The scandal also threatened to expose the Right-wing influence machine. Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, The Washington Times and more elements of the Conservative power structure faced real trouble if this scandal was ever explored.
Fortunately for them, they could safely assume that this was a scandal that would never be examined. Sure there was some possibility of an investigation, and yes a handful of folks would have to go down. But most would be protected—and they have been.
<span style="background:yellow;"> The Abramoff Scandal is an unexamined affair.</span>
As a result hundreds of corrupt people and organizations who were involved in this scandal are free to continue their activities without fear of exposure. Like Tim Phillips, Dick Armey, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Don Young and many, many more they have gotten away with it.
Now only three entities could have examined this scandal in greater depth:
- The Press.
- The Department of Justice.
- The Congress of the United States.
Of the three, only one has completely dropped the ball. And that is the Congress of the United States.
We know a lot about the Abramoff Scandal because of some great reporting. In many ways, the media, new and old, did a great job. The work of the Washington Post was excellent and there were many others working various aspects of the scandal. Blogs and new media have played an important role as well. Still, all reporting is limited if secrets get to be protected from disclosure.
The Department of Justice has been examining this scandal and trying to build criminal cases against members of the conspiracy. It is hard because the laws governing influence peddling and corruption of public officials are intentionally vague and designed to be very hard to prove [more on this in a moment]. Congress seems to hate bright lines when it comes to ethics, campaign funds and rewarding contributors. Sadly, this affliction extends to some Democrats as well as most Republicans.
<span style="background:yellow;">And that is perhaps why Congress NEVER investigated Congressional involvement in the Abramoff Scandal.</span>
Over 60 Members of Congress were said to be involved with Abramoff and yet, Congress NEVER investigated a single allegation.
Members were mentioned in indictments and guilty pleas—and yet Congress NEVER investigated a single allegation.
Court documents and evidence show that millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks were corruptly inserted into Legislation—and yet Congress NEVER investigated a single allegation.
Over the last 18 months, the DOJ has uncovered new evidence of Congressional based corruption related to this scandal on an almost monthly basis—and yet Congress NEVER investigated a single allegation.
Now there were some very limited Congressional investigations related to the scandal. John McCain led an investigation for the Senate’s Indian Affairs Committee that, as I’ve noted in other Diaries, had some problems).
In 2006, the Senate Finance Committee’s Democratic Minority issued a report about Abramoff’s use of tax-exempt groups (like Norquist front group Americans for Tax Reform) and Henry Waxman’s led an investigation into ties between Team Abramoff and the Bush White House.
All of these reports shared a common attribute. They all actively protected any member of Congress (beyond the designated scandal fall guy Bob Ney) from any scrutiny. In documents released, the names of Senators and Members of Congress were redacted and if any scandal dots in a report led to a Member’s office, those dots were intentionally left unconnected.
Today, this scandal is "old news". It is in the "happy" past of the beltway zeitgeist. If you talk about this scandal and the Congressional connections you are accused of living in the past, or partisan finger pointing or trying to resurrect something that "is behind us" and "finshed". The collective wisdom of the Beltway is that this is over. Except that it is not.
Hundreds of corrupt Members of Congress, their staffers, former Bush officials and Republican operatives are free to roam the halls of power and to do it all over again. Just like the Iran-Contra Scandal or the Savings and Loan Scandal or ABSCAM or—hey pick your favorite scandal of the last thirty years—the vast majority of those involved get to walk and continue to pollute our politics.
That is the story of Grover Norquist, of Jack Kingston, of Dana Rorhabacher, of Ralph Reed, of Karl Rove, of Newt Gingrich, of Dick Armey, of Tom DeLay, of Roy Blunt, of Dan Burton, of Ed Gillespie and so many, many more. Most are little known pricks like Tim Phillips. There are literally hundreds of these scandal connected weasels polluting every aspect of our National politics. And each and every one of these punks has been given a free pass to corrupt Washington by a Congress that refuses to investigate itself.
That is the real scandal.
Now you can see the impact of this in the debate over Health Care Reform. This time last year it was the Election. The Financial crisis, Immigration Reform, energy policy, war policy, foreign policy, civil rights, education or whatever is negatively impacted by this Congressional refusal to investigate the worst corruption scandal in Washington in over a hundred years.
The idea that one can leave the Abramoff Scandal’s impact and influence on and in Congress uninvestigated is a recipe for permanent corruption.
Congress has never investigated THEIR involvement in this scandal.
It is important that this be done: Now. "Better late than never" is an apt saying for this situation.
Sure, there are some positive changes in the 111th Congress. It seems that the Ethics Committees in the House and Senate have been taken out of the deep freeze. Senator Ensign is being investigated. So is Rep. Charlie Rangel over on the House side. There may be a few others as well. I’m glad to see this Democratic Congress revive the concept of investigating Congressional wrongdoing.
And yet, if they do not dig into the Abramoff Scandal, they are not doing their job. They are letting far too many walk. If we let the people involved in the Abramoff Scandal escape investigation then we will guarantee that this pattern of corruption will be repeated over and over again. The truth needs to be exposed. It needs to be revealed. Between 1994 and 2006 the Congress of the United States became a cesspool of corruption. Some was exposed, but most has been covered-up.
Republicans and Democrats have found common cause in ensuring that the truth about this era of corruption is never exposed to the light of day. Sure, the Abramoff Scandal was mostly a Republican Scandal, but at the same time there were some Democrat centered scams being run as well (Think Murtha, think Rangel, think Jefferson). Now the Democratic centered scandal are taking center stage, while the Republican era of corruption fades from view. What Murtha or Rangel or anther Democrat did over the last twelve years will be the hot scandal story. It should be. We have quite a few Democrats who need to go. A "D" behind your name is not a license to steal and if somebody is dirty—they need to go and the sooner the better.
But while we hold Democrats to a high standard, we can not let the dozens of Abramoff connected Republicans skate free just because they are in the Minority. Fuck that.
Congress needs a clean-up crew. These scandals need to be investigated and exposed, regardless of where the chips fall.
My suggestion: Congress appoints an independent Commission, with subpoena power, to investigate systematic corruption of Congress between 1994 and 2006. Most of the crimes that will be uncovered will be past the statute of limitations. I suspect that very few will go to jail as a result, but we will learn the extent of the corruption and use that knowledge to create Legislation to prevent this from happening again.
The biggest trouble with corruption in Washington is that the current laws on the books are way too weak. It is way to easy to skirt justice. Without the heat of an investigation these laws will never change. The power of professional lobbyists will continue to grow and the revolving doors between the Hill, K Street and political operators for hire will keep spinning at faster and faster rates.
The DOJ has collected a literal mountain of evidence for such a committee to dig into. They have millions and millions of pages of documents, transcripts and other evidence related to the Abramoff scandal alone. Only a fraction of these documents will be used in court as a handful of Abramoff related cases come to trial. And because of the weak nature of public corruption laws, these cases are very, very hard to prove.
Take the case of Abramoff crony, Kevin Ring. As I wrote earlier, he went on trial in September. Yesterday it was reported that his Jury was "deadlocked" and a mis-trial was declared. The Government had a pretty strong case against Ring and yet the laws related to corrupting government officials are weak enough to allow Ring’s attorneys to confuse at least one juror (for ongoing coverage of the Ring trial and the DOJ investigation of the Abramoff scandal visit the excellent Anti-Corruption Republican blog).
Kevin Ring will go on trial again. If the DOJ is able to convict him, they may be able to file charges against John Doolittle. And then Tom DeLay, Don Young and others—possibly including Karl Rove. If Ring can ride the weak laws concerning the buying and selling of influence in Washington to a stalemate or acquittal, he will join Ollie North, John Poindexter, Scooter Libby and others as yet another corruptionist who escaped justice on a technicality.
This will happen again and again and again until one of these scandals is run to ground and respect for the law—and fear of the law—once again walks the Halls of Congress and the corridors of power in Washington. Without confronting the corruption in the system every effort for progressive change will always be one step forward and two steps back.
Democrats control Congress. They could launch a real investigation into the recent era of corruption. Senator Reid, Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic Leaders in the House and Senate have the power to do this. It should be done. It will take out some current Democratic Members. It will take out many more Republicans. Best of all it will help to clean the Hill of corrupt staffers and drive some of these weasels like Tim Phillips and Dick Armey out of the public arena forever.
And if fortune truly were to smile on me, quite a few of these pricks would spend a few years behind bars for their crimes. Even if they didn’t, exposing their corruption would help us to reform lobbying laws, strengthen rules and ethics laws for elected and appoint government officials, and create some bright lines that could be easily prosecuted when crossed.
Cheers