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Jack Abramoff, Admitted Felon and Former Super-Lobbyist

• Disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff was sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison in a Florida fraud case, the minimum sentence allowed. Jack Abramoff has been ordered to report to prison by June 29th, 2006. There are two separate prosecutions against Jack Abramoff. The first is focused on Abramoff's defrauding of investors in his purchase, along with Adam Kidan, of SunCruz, a fleet of casino boats. This is the case in which he was sentenced to 5 years and 10 months. The other case relates to bribing public officials and defrauding his Indian clients. The second case is proceeding in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The minimum sentence was awarded because of his cooperation with authorities on the political corruption cases. His second sentence is likely to run concurrently with his first. [MSNBC, 3/29/2006]
  
• Pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bribe lawmakers. In one of his plea agreements with the Justice Department, Abramoff acknowledges offering things of value in exchange for actions by public officials. For example, he offered numerous items to “Representative No. 1,” who has subsequently been identified as Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio). These gifts included an all-expense paid trip to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in 2000, a trip to the Super Bowl in 2001, and a golfing trip to Scotland in 2002. Abramoff also gave “numerous tickets for entertainment, including concerts and sporting events,” and held fundraising events, “including providing box suites and food at various sport and concert venues.” The plea agreement also enumerates campaign contributions, including a $10,000 gift to the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2000 that Abramoff made at Ney’s request, regular meals and drinks at Abramoff’s restaurant and frequent golf outings.
  
• In exchange, Abramoff, Scanlon and others received Ney’s agreement to support and pass legislation, place statements into the Congressional Record, contact personnel in the executive branch and meet with Abramoff’s clients. Ney also chose a client of Abramoff’s to provide the wireless telephone infrastructure in the House and Ney agreed to introduce legislation that would lift a federal ban on gambling to benefit an Abramoff client. [Abramoff Plea Agreement, 1/3/2006; Washington Post, 1/4/2006]
  
• Pleaded guilty to bilking Indian tribes out of $25 million. Abramoff has pleaded guilty to working with business partner Michael Scanlon in a secret arrangement involving kickbacks that was intended to defraud his tribal clients. In his plea agreement, Abramoff acknowledges that he encouraged his existing clients to obtain grass roots and public relations services from Scanlon’s company, Capitol Campaign Strategies (CCS). Scanlon agreed to pay Abramoff 50 percent of the profits from those clients. The two kept their arrangement secret. Abramoff, who faces up to 30 years in prison, owes restitution of about $25 million to his former clients, in addition to the roughly $20 million in restitution Scanlon agreed to make in November 2005. (Scanlon pleaded guilty to corruption, fraud and conspiracy.) [Abramoff Plea Agreement, 1/3/2006; Justice Department press release, 11/21/2005]
  
• Pleaded guilty to fraudulently buying a casino company. Abramoff and partner Adam Kidan have pleaded guilty to using fraud to purchase a casino cruise line, SunCruz Casinos. Abramoff and Kidan secured the loan for the $147.5 million purchase by faking a wire transfer of $23 million and by falsifying other documents. Abramoff listed Tony Rudy, then an aide to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) as personal references on his loan application. [Justice Department press release, 1/4/2005; Washington Post, 1/5/2006]
  
• Used a phony foundation and bilked money from a school to pay for legislator travel and entertainment. Abramoff’s Capital Athletic Foundation (CAF) collected more than $6 million in its first four years, with a stated purpose of running sports programs for youths. But less than 1 percent of the charity’s expenditures went toward youth athletic activities. Instead, the charity was used as a conduit for influence-peddling expenditures, such as spending more than $150,000 on a golf trip to Scotland that included Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and David Safavian, a former chief of procurement for the Office of Management and Budget, who has since been indicted in connection with the trip. The CAF also paid $248,742 for a house in Silver Spring, Md., which was purchased in the name of a company directed by Abramoff and his fellow lobbyists at Greenberg Traurig. More than 70 percent of the CAF’s revenue from 2001 to 2003 went to the Eshkol Academy, a school established by Abramoff that he used as a front for contributions. The Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, an Abramoff client, contributed $1 million to the foundation because Abramoff and Scanlon said it was “where to send money” in Washington. A 2003 e-mail from Abramoff to Scanlon says it all: “Please make sure the next $1M[illion] from Coushatta for me goes to Eshkol Academy directly. Please tell them that we are ‘using the school as our conduit for some [our] of activities,’” Abramoff wrote. “If that won’t fly with them, use CAF.” The Eshkol Academy, he added, “is our front group.” [Abramoff Plea Agreement, 1/3/2006; Washingon Post, 9/28/2004]
  
• Instructed at least one former congressional staffer to ignore the ban on lobbying his former boss in the first year after leaving Capitol Hill. Justice Department charging documents accuse Abramoff of hiring at least one senior congressional staff member as a lobbyist and encouraging him to contact his former employer despite the federal one-year lobbying ban. [U.S.Attorney Charges, 1/3/2006]
  
• Steered money to the wife of a congressional staffer in exchange for favors. In his plea agreement, Abramoff acknowledges seeking the assistance of “Staffer A” on various matters, including stopping legislation on Internet gambling and opposing postal rate increases. The context of the plea agreement reveals that “Staffer A” is Tony Rudy, DeLay’s former deputy chief of staff. In exchange, Abramoff “provided ten equal monthly payments totaling $50,000” to Rudy’s wife through a non-profit entity. The money that went to Rudy’s wife was paid by Abramoff clients who benefited from actions taken by Rudy, the plea agreement says. Press reports have documented that the $50,000 was contributed in equal parts by eLottery Inc. and the Magazine Publishers of America. The contributions went to an Abramoff-linked Orthodox Jewish Group called Toward Tradition, which then paid Rudy’s wife. [Abramoff Plea Agreement, 1/3/2006; Washington Post, 1/9/2006]
  
• Double dealing: Abramoff secretly lobbied to close a tribe’s casino, then solicited money from the same tribe to work on its behalf to undo what he had done. Abramoff worked in tandem with partner Michael Scanlon and religious activist Ralph Reed to lobby the Texas legislature to shutter the El Paso, Texas, casino of the Tigua tribe in 2002. Abramoff told Reed he would “make sure all our friends crush” the Tiguas’ lobbyists “like bugs.” Abramoff instructed Reed to unleash his “tigers” in the Texas legislature to introduce legislation to close the casino, a mission that succeeded in February 2002. Ten days after the casino closed, Abramoff wrote to a Tigua representative and promised to get Republicans in Congress to rectify the “gross indignity perpetuated by the Texas state authorities.” He advised the Tiguas to hire a company run by Scanlon to initiate a plan to re-open the casino. Abramoff e-mailed Scanlon in reference to a Tigua consultant: “This guy NEEDS us to save his ass!!!” In March 2002, the Tiguas sent $4.2 million to Scanlon’s company, which, in turn, kicked back $2.1 million to Abramoff. Abramoff acknowledges that he and Scanlon had collected “millions of dollars” from a Louisiana tribe to oppose gambling in Texas – and hid that fact from the Texas tribe. [Abramoff plea agreement, 1/3/2004; Washington Post, 9/26/2004]
  
• Used a phony “think tank” as a conduit to avoid disclosure of unsavory clients. Abramoff and Scanlon established the American International Center (AIC) as a method to accept money from certain clients without disclosing their names. Although the AIC billed itself as a “think tank” that was “determined to influence global paradigms in an increasingly complex world” its board members were two friends of Scanlon, a yoga teacher and a lifeguard. Abramoff instructed certain lobbying clients to pay the AIC. He then reported his lobbying activity on behalf of the AIC, avoiding disclosure of the names of the groups for which he lobbied, such as the government of Malaysia. Abramoff also used the AIC to funnel payments from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, an Abramoff client with a large casino operation, to anti-gambling activist Ralph Reed, who used the money to lobby against creation of new casinos that would compete with the Choctaws. A Choctaw official speculated that the arrangement was intended to protect Reed from revelations that he was being paid with gambling money. “I am sure there probably were concerns – or public perception concerns – about some of the recipients, about not being associated with a tribe or with a gaming tribe,” said Nell Rogers, Abramoff’s chief contact with the Choctaw Indians. [Washington Post, 6/23/2005 and 12/29/2005]
  
• $70,265 trip to Scotland for which the National   Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) was listed as the sponsor. Two Abramoff clients, the Mississippi Choctaw Indians and eLottery Inc., cut $25,000 checks to the NCPPR the day the group embarked for Scotland. Expenses for the trip were billed to credit cards in the names of Abramoff and lobbyist Edwin Buckham, DeLay’s former chief of staff. Susan Hirschman, then DeLay’s chief of staff, confirmed that DeLay’s staff was in contact with Preston Gates, Abramoff’s lobbying firm, to coordinate the trip. Later, Abramoff solicited $50,000 from another client, the Tigua tribe, to send Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) to Scotland. “The trip will be quite expensive. (we did this for another member – you know who) 2 years ago,” Abramoff wrote in an e-mail to a consultant of the tribe. “You know who” was DeLay. The trips for both DeLay and Ney included rounds of golf on the legendary St. Andrews course in Scotland. [Washington Post, 3/12/2005, 4/24/2005 and 10/18/2005]
  
• Ties to the White House. Despite vociferous denials by White House officials of knowing Jack Abramoff, including denials by President Bush, records demonstrate that Abramoff did indeed visit White House officials. Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff made at least two visits to the White House during the Bush administration, according to Secret Service logs released Wednesday under a court order. The logs do not say with whom Abramoff met or what they discussed and "appear to be incomplete," said Tom Fitton, president of the watchdog group Judicial Watch, which requested the records. Abramoff had boasted of his White House ties. He was among 550 elite Bush fundraisers in 2004, raising at least $100,000 for the re-election campaign. [USA Today, 5/10/2006]

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