Who will be the next GOP thug brought down by their close ties to Jack Abramoff?
Well, today the AP makes a strong case that Sen. Conrad Burns and Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC) are near the top of the list of elected officials who need to worry about their names showing up in an indictment. The reason is an extensive email trail detailing how Jack got school construction money for the Saginaw Chippewa tribe:
A Republican Party official and Jack Abramoff's lobbying team bluntly discussed using large political donations as a way to pressure lawmakers into securing federal money for a tribal client, according to e-mails gathered by prosecutors. [snip]
Abramoff's team ultimately prevailed ... Lawmakers who helped got thousands of dollars in fresh donations from Abramoff's team.
Federal bribery law prohibits public officials from taking actions because of gifts or political donations and bars lobbyists from demanding government action in exchange for donations.
More details and speculation on the jump...
It looks like there is a lot singing to the Feds going on by the old
Team Abramoff. They are talking and everybody is turning over emails. Burns, Taylor and many more are in trouble.
And remember the story of how the Abramoff secured school construction money for the Saginaw Chippewa tribe is just one Abramoff scandal thread. There are many, many more to follow. All of them lead to GOP corruption. DeLay, Ney, Doolittle, Young and Pombo seem to be tangled in the scandal threads. And Think Progress has a good list of others who may brought down by their close ties to Jack Abramoff.
Today the AP took a closer look at how Team Abramoff worked with the GOP to get bidness done. What they found was a well-connected group who used political donations as a reward and threaten to take the money away if anybody didn't take care of their clients:
Abramoff's team repeatedly discussed donations as the reason Republican leaders should intervene for the Saginaw, the e-mails show.
"The tribes that want this (not just ours) are the only guys who take care of the Rs," Abramoff deputy Todd Boulanger wrote in a June 19, 2002, e-mail to Abramoff and his lobbying team, using "Rs" as shorthand for Republicans.
"We're going to seriously reconsider our priorities in the current lists I'm drafting right now if our friends don't weigh in with some juice. If leadership isn't going to cash in a chit for (easily) our most important project, then they are out of luck from here on out," he wrote, referring to political donation lists.
The e-mails have become evidence in a federal corruption probe into whether lawmakers, congressional aides and administration officials helped Abramoff's clients in exchange for gifts and donations.
Jack got what he wanted, but first he had a problem. The Department of the Interior did not approve his request of $3 million for the Tribe. So he did what he always did, he turned to Tom DeLay and the GOP controlled House to bring some heat to DOI so they would approve the money. Then Jack had another problem: Joel Kaplan, a GOP House appropriations staffer who hadn't gotten the memo from DeLay Inc.:
Kaplan's resistance drew the ire of Abramoff's team.
"The bottom line is that a staffer received several letters from appropriators, Native American Caucus co-chairs and others supporting a project that costs the federal government ZERO dollars and he is refusing to put it in the bill because it's 'his account,'" Boulanger wrote.
So Team Abramoff sought out more help and got it from the RNCC:.
A staffer for the National Republican Congressional Committee, Jonathan Poe, suggested Abramoff's team compile a list of tribal donations, comparing Republicans with Democrats, to help make the case for lawmakers to overrule Kaplan, the e-mails state. [snip]
Abramoff's team obliged, creating a tally that showed his tribal clients overwhelmingly donated to Republicans -- $225,000 compared with $79,000 for Democrats.
Now, back in 2002 when this started, Democrats controlled the Senate. Michigan Democratic Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow backed the request from the Saginaw Chippewa tribe, because they were in Michigan. Jack was worried that the funds would be blocked and that the tribe would hold it against the GOP. After the 2002 election, Jack didn't have to give the Democrats a second thought. The GOP was back in the driver's seat.
Jack turned to his number one man in the Senate, Conrad Burns to move things along. In the House, Jack was able to count on DeLay, Inc. As a byproduct of the new Congress, the Appropriation subcommittee with oversight on the money got a new Abramoff friendly Chairman:
In early 2003, Kaplan's new boss, House subcommittee chairman Charles Taylor, R-N.C., ended any problems in the House when he signed onto the Saginaw money. Burns' office took up the fight in the Senate.
Both oversaw subcommittees that controlled Interior's budget, and the two lawmakers wrote a letter in May 2003 in an effort to overcome resistance inside Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was arguing the Saginaw shouldn't qualify for the school program.
"It is our belief the Saginaw Chippewa tribal school in question clearly falls within" the school construction program, Burns and Taylor wrote, sharply criticizing the BIA. "We hope our collective response has cleared up any unnecessary confusion."
And the payoffs from Abramoff and his team went out to the key players:
A month before the letter, Abramoff's firm threw Taylor a fundraiser on April 11, 2003, that scored thousands of dollars in donations for the lawmaker's campaign, including $2,000 from Abramoff and $1,000 from the Saginaw. The tribe donated $3,000 more to Taylor a month after the letter.
Burns, likewise, got fresh donations. Several weeks before the letter, Burns collected $1,000 from the Saginaw and $5,000 from another Abramoff tribe. The month after the letter, the Saginaw delivered $4,000 in donations to Burns.
And earlier the RNCC collected $50,000 for their advice on how to twist their arm, I mean lobby the GOP leadership.
And of course the tons of emails are being check against other evidence by the prosecutors:
The blunt letter has caught federal investigators' interest because it referenced correspondence that had been drafted inside Interior but never delivered. Federal agents are investigating whether an Interior official leaked the draft to Abramoff's team so it could be used by the lawmakers to pressure the department.
I guess we should add J. Stephen Griles and Gale Norton to the list of those with BIG problems. No wonder Norton resigned. Abramoff was on the Bush Transition Team for the Department of the Interior. He helped put the DOI team together. And then he worked them for his clients. Many of the scandal threads run through Norton's DOI.
So Taylor and Burns are in the spotlight today. So are some of the others, like Doolittle, Davis and Ney. As more connections to Abramoff and his team are revealed, more GOPers will get their moment in the scandal spotlight.
And of course there is an Abramoff connection to the growing NH Phone Jamming Scandal.
And there is the growing importance of the Abramoff Scandal threads through Guam and Saipan.
Congressman Miller is calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Abramoff's activities in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory. We need to get behind this effort as a rallying cry for the Netroots. And the mandate of the special prosecutor needs to be all things Abramoff, where ever they go and whomever they take down.
Call your Congressperson and Senators and demand they support the effort. Let's activate the Netroots on this one. Perhaps Ned Lamont could take it on as an issue in Connecticut. It would be interesting to see what stand Bush's favorite Democrat would on the call for a Abramoff special prosecutor. It would also be interesting to see what would happen if the DNC made this one of the planks for Nationalizing this election.
It is time to end the GOP Culture of Corruption. It is time to take this Country back. 2006 is now. Let's go to work.