Volz Points Finger at Ney

Volz Points Finger at Ney

By Paul Kiel - May 8, 2006, 11:46 AM

In this, the fourth (Michael Scanlon, Jack Abramoff, Tony Rudy, and now Neil Volz) guilty plea to implicate Rep. Bob "Representative #1" Ney (R-OH), we get more details about what Ney did to earn Jack Abramoff's goodies.

Volz, Ney's former chief of staff, admits to receiving all sorts of bribes while he was still with Ney, and then turning around and taking part in the bribing once he moved over to work with Abramoff.

And we learn about a new, particularly shameless perk: Abramoff helped pay for a two-night vacation of Ney's, without even bothering to funnel the money through one of his nonprofits. "In or about August 2003," the plea reads, "defendant VOLZ paid for part of a two-night trip to the Sagamore Resort at Lake George, New York, for Representative #1 and members of his staff. Defendant VOLZ assured Representative #1 that defendant VOLZ would be reimbursed for his payments by Abramoff." Apparently Ney didn't want his old chief of staff laying out the bribe - he preffered to get it from a familiar source.

Neil Volz, as Ney's former chief of staff, was the one to go between Ney and Abramoff. As a result, there are new details about Ney's shilling.

We learned from prior plea agreements that Ney agreed to insert a line into the Help America Vote Act that would lift the Texas gaming ban on an Abramoff client, the Tigua tribe. Volz implicates Ney for that too, but adds that on two different occasions, Ney was given talking points for his discussions with the Tigua.

According to the plea, on August 14, 2002, Volz told "Representative #1 what Abramoff wanted him to say in a meeting with representatives of [the Tigua tribe of Texas] about his agreement to insert an amendment lifting the gaming ban affecting the tribe." That happened again on October 8, 2002.

Volz also convinced Ney to go to bat for Foxcom Wireless, an Abramoff client that wanted a contract to improve cell phone reception in the House.

And then there is the now-familiar long list of bribes (trips to the Marianas, Scotland, tickets to the MCI Center, meals at Signatures, etc.) that Volz received while working for Ney, and then gave out after he'd left to work for Abramoff.

Volz faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He'll get a softer sentence, of course, depending on "how helpful" he is to prosecutors.

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