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The Pimping of the Presidency
Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist Billing Clients for Face Time with G.W. Bush
BY LOU DUBOSE
our months
after he took the oath of office in 2001, President George W. Bush was the
attraction, and the White House the venue, for a fundraiser organized by the
alleged perpetrator of the largest billing fraud in the history of corporate
lobbying. In May 2001, Jack Abramoff’s lobbying client book was worth $4.1
million in annual billing for the Greenberg Traurig law firm. He was a friend of
Bush advisor Karl Rove. He was a Bush “Pioneer,” delivering at least
$100,000 in bundled contributions to the 2000 campaign. He had just concluded
his work on the Bush Transition Team as an advisor to the Department of the
Interior. He had sent his personal assistant Susan Ralston to the White House to
work as Rove’s personal assistant. He was a close friend, advisor, and
high-dollar fundraiser for the most powerful man in Congress, Tom DeLay.
Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did,
charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting
with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May
2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit
foundation he and his wife operated.
Abramoff’s White House guests were the chiefs of two of the six casino-rich
Indian tribes he and his partner Mike Scanlon ultimately billed $82 million for
services tribal leaders now claim were never performed or were improperly
performed. Together the six tribes would make $10 million in political
contributions, at Abramoff’s direction, almost all of it to Republican
campaigns of his choosing. On May 9, 2001, when he ushered the two tribal chiefs
into the White House to meet the President, The Washington Post story
that would end his lobbying career and begin two Senate Committee investigations
was three years away. (When the Post story broke in February 2004,
however, Abramoff and Scanlon, a former Tom DeLay press aide, were already
targets of a U.S. Attorney’s investigation in Washington.)
Abramoff brought the Coushatta and Choctaw chiefs to Washington at the request
of Grover Norquist. Norquist is founder and director of Americans for Tax
Reform, the advocacy group committed to slashing taxes until the federal
government is so small you “can drown it in the bathtub.” Norquist started
ATR in 1985. His power increased exponentially in 1994, when Republicans took
control of the House of Representatives and he collaborated with then-Majority
Whip Tom DeLay to launch the “K Street Project”—a coordinated campaign to
compel lobbyists to contribute only to Republican candidates and ultimately to
hire only Republicans. Like Abramoff and Rove, Norquist considered George
Bush’s victory over Al Gore the culmination of a project the three Washington
insiders started 30 years ago as national leaders of the College Republicans.
Since the Post’s Susan
Schmidt broke the Jack Abramoff story, the media has focused on the stunning $82
million Abramoff and Scanlon billed six tribes for lobbying and public relations
work. Far less attention has been paid to the political contributions, by
Abramoff’s account $10 million, made by the six tribes. That piece of the
story involves the K Street Project, which moves the money of corporate
lobbyists and their clients into the accounts of Republican candidates, PACs,
and issue advocacy groups.
Republican Campaign Accounts
Abramoff advised tribal leaders that the contributions were the cost of doing
business in Washington, where he could protect them from other tribes trying to
open casinos to compete with those that already had them. He sent orders for the
checks to be cut, designating each recipient. On March 6, 2002, for example,
Coushatta Tribal Council Chair Lovelin Poncho followed Abramoff’s orders and
disbursed $336,300 in tribal funds, according to tribal accounting ledgers
obtained by the Observer.
The Coushattas, a southwest Louisiana tribe of 837 members, operate a casino
that does an estimated $300 million in annual business. The $32 million they
paid Abramoff and Scanlon makes the tribe the largest victim of the fraud their
lawyers now allege in a lawsuit filed by Texas plaintiff’s firm Provost
Umphrey. The tribe also contributed what tribal council member David Sickey said
was probably “many millions” of dollars to political causes and charities
designated by Abramoff.
Since we first reported the White House ATR fundraiser and the $1 million
contribution to the Capital Athletic Foundation (see
“K Street Croupiers,” November 19, 2004), the Coushattas, speaking
through Austin attorneys at Hance, Scarborough, Wright, Ginsburg & Brusilow,
and through Louisiana political consultant Roy Fletcher, have vociferously
denied that tribal Chairman Poncho visited the White House after contributing
$25,000 to ATR. They also denied the $1 million contribution to Abramoff’s
foundation. Recently the story has changed. Or at least the version told by the
majority that controls the council has begun to change. Two minority members of
the five-seat council have pointed to the pay-to-play meeting with President
Bush and the $1 million contribution to Abramoff as examples of the council’s
financial mismanagement. One of the two members of the minority faction, David
Sickey, has regularly made himself available to the press. Normally, press
inquiries to the council majority are answered by Hance Scarborough, by Roy
Fletcher, or occasionally by sources close to the council majority.
According to a source close to the tribal majority, Chairman Poncho recently
“revisited that issue” of his visit to the White House. He had previously
denied it because he thought he was responding to press inquiries that implied
he had a one-on-one meeting with Bush. He now recalls that he in fact did go to
the White House on May 9, 2001. Tribal attorney Kathryn Fowler Van Hoof went
with him, although she did not get into the meeting with the President. That
meeting lasted for about 15 minutes and was not a one-on-one meeting. At the
meeting, Bush made some general comments about Indian policy but did not discuss
Indian gaming. Abramoff was at the meeting—for which he charged the Coushatta
Tribe $25,000. The change in Poncho’s position is odd in light of the fact
that he and his spokespersons have maintained for more than a year that he did
not meet with President Bush in May 2001.
Norquist has not responded to inquiries about using the White House as a
fundraiser. It is, however, a regular ATR practice to invite state legislators
and tribal leaders who have supported ATR anti-tax initiatives to the White
House for a personal thank-you from the President. A source at ATR said no money
is ever accepted from participants in these events. The $25,000 check from the
Coushattas suggests that, at least in this instance, Norquist’s organization
made an exception. The $75,000 collected from the Mississippi Choctaws and two
corporate sponsors mentioned in Abramoff’s e-mail suggests there were other
exceptions. Norquist recently wrote to the tribes who paid to attend White House
meetings. His story regarding that event is also evolving. The contributions, he
told tribal leaders in letters that went out in May, were in no way related to
any White House event. That doesn’t square with the paper trail Abramoff and
Norquist left behind, which makes it evident that they were selling access to
the President.
The Coushatta Tribal Council majority has also revised its response to questions
about the $1 million contribution, which critics in the tribe have insisted was
made to Abramoff’s Capital Athletic Foundation in 2001. The foundation funded
Abramoff’s Jewish prep school in Bethesda, MD, which closed soon after his
lobbying scheme unraveled. When the Observer inquired in November 2004 about the
$1 million contribution, we had obtained a copy of the Capital Athletic
Foundation’s tax filing, but the contributor’s name was redacted. Following
the lead of Lake Charles, Louisiana, American Press reporter Shawn Martin, the
Observer last week obtained an un-redacted copy. The $1 million contribution,
roughly 95 percent of what the foundation raised in 2001, was attributed to the
Coushatta Tribe. A source working with the Coushatta Tribal Council majority
said it now appears that the contribution was made in response to a bill sent by
Mike Scanlon. Accountants working under the direction of Hance Scarborough found
a $1-million Greenberg Traurig invoice that Scanlon sent the tribe. Scanlon
routinely sent un-itemized bills for larger sums, which the tribe routinely
paid. But as he was not a Greenberg Traurig employee, he billed on his own
Capitol Campaign Strategies invoices. On the $1 million Greenberg Traurig
invoice Scanlon sent the tribe in 2001, the company name was misspelled.
There will need to be more accounting, probably by different accountants. And
perhaps by different legal representation, or at least under a different
understanding between the tribe and its lawyers. In the May 28 tribal election
on the Elton, LA reservation, a reform slate won a majority on the five-member
council. Sickey, who five days before the election maintained that the $1
million contribution was made and that tribal chair Poncho indeed went to the
White House in 2001, predicted the new majority will hire forensic accountants
to determine where all the money went. (A week before the election he was
looking for a tribal newsletter in which, he said, Poncho described his 2001
White House visit.) The shift on the council does not bode well for its Austin
law firm. Hance Scarborough had gone to tribal court and successfully blocked a
recall election that would have forced the council majority to stand for
election a year ago, and David Sickey was a proponent of the recall. “Kent
Hance doesn’t represent me or [the other minority dissident] Harold John,”
said Sickey. “He represents Lovelin Poncho.”
The White House press office has not responded to our questions about other
visits Jack Abramoff might have made to the White House or about Norquist using
the official residence of the President to raise funds for Americans for Tax
Reform. None of the political contributions Abramoff insisted the tribes make as
yet have been returned.
Lou Dubose is a former Observer editor and co-author of The Hammer: Tom
DeLay, God, Money and the Rise of the Republican Congress. This story was
written with support from the Fund for Constitutional Government.
Source: www.texasobserver.org/showForPrint.asp?IssueDate=6%2F10%2F2005&IssueFolder=zth%5F050610&
ArticleFileName=050610%5Ff1%2Ehtm&Title=The+Pimping+of+the+Presidency
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