From Firedoglake.com
By Christy Hardin Smith
There have been some new filings, some news bits and pieces, and a whole lot of speculation and other pieces of information that need parsing from the continuing Fitzgerald investigation and the Libby prosecution. What better way to spend my Sunday morning that putting together a whole mish-mash update for everyone, I say.
The NYDaily News had an interesting bit of anonymously sourced reporting and speculation on Saturday that I wanted to hit first regarding Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell. and potential witness in the Libby case as well as potential grand jury witness in the continuing investigation. Here’s what the NYDaily News had to say that I found intriguing:
Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has emerged as a key witness in the CIA leak probe, the Daily News has learned. Armitage has been questioned several times, but is not expected to be indicted by the federal grand jury investigating who outed CIA spy Valerie Plame to journalists in 2003, sources said.
Armitage’s testimony could hurt Vice President Cheney’s indicted former chief aide Lewis (Scooter) Libby, or President Bush’s political guru, Karl Rove.
Two sources familiar with the case said Armitage, Rove and Libby all had contacts with the press about Plame. Unlike Rove and Libby, Armitage appears to have tried to dissuade reporters from writing about her.
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald recently had to sneak Armitage into a Washington courthouse to get past reporters - a sign of his value in the case, according to one source.
Interesting — but it conflicts a bit with some of the previous information we have known about grand jury testimony — a piece of information Jane dug up earlier regarding Judge Hogan, who presides over the grand jury, and his ruling prohibiting "secret" grand jury witnesses:
Up until the summer of 2004 people who testifying before they grand jury were often brought up in some secret back elevator to avoid press scrutiny, and I suppose that’s how they wheeled in Novak’s coffin undetected. But around that time Judge Hogan ruled that everyone who appeared before the gj had to walk in the front door (and wouldn’t I love to to know the series of events leading up to that). Anyway, from that point on it pretty much guaranteed that if someone was having an official Fitz gj interlude, the press knew about it.
So either Judge Hogan has changed his mind, Fitz got a special dispensation with regard to Armitage’s testimony or the NYDailyNews source got that point wrong. Or maybe a different judge is presiding over the current grand jury and has decided that the freight elevator is okey dokey as a witness conduit for secret grand jury witnesses and the special prosecutor’s team again — in which case, game on baby, because there have been weeks of speculation on what might or might not be going on and THAT would raise a whole helluva lot of questions, wouldn’t it? (You’ll pardon me while I don’t hold my breath on getting specific answers to these questions from Russell Samborn, Fitz’s spokesperson or any court personnel — they don’t talk about grand jury proceedings because they are bound by law to keep them secret.)
I seriously doubt that the judge decided to go backwards in terms of "secret witnesses," but I throw it out there as a possiblity only because the NYDailyNews has raised it. We’ll try very hard to get an answer from someone on that — but as far as I have been able to find, there are no public orders issued from Judge Hogan or any other judge which contradict the previous order. But again, we’ll definitely look into it and get back to you.
Anyway, the NYDaily News article goes on to say that Armitage has been cooperating with Fitzgerald’s investigators and the legal team since the inception of the investigation — which, if true, could explain some of the inside track information that Fitz has gotten, given Armitage’s placement at the dividing line between Powell’s State Department and Wolfowitz, Rummy and Cheney’s neocon cabal and the WHIGs.
This article ties into some anonymously sourced bits from Steve Clemons earlier in the week on Armitage as well — and I point this article out because the discussion in the comments on anonymous sourcing and the CIA Leak investigation reporting is quite good, and I thought everyone would like a look, as much as for the Armitage speculation. This piece knocks down the earlier speculation from Bobby Inman that Steve reported about Armitage, by the way — and doesn’t it seem like it’s been a busy week for Armitage speculation, in general? Doesn’t it make you wonder why that is — who is floating this out? Why now? What is being signaled — and to whom? By whom?
I, for one, feel like I’m running around in circles trying to chase down all the "what ifs" involved in the Armitage speculation that has gone on thus far. Is he Woodward’s source? Maybe, maybe not, yes, definitely not, etc., etc.), and I’ve decided to just throw out there what we have at the moment and give everyone a chance to be on the same page while we wait for actual answers from Fitzgerald and his team — who, honestly, are the only folks at the moment other than Armitage — who isn’t talking on the record about any of this — who know exactly what Armitage is or is not doing in terms of cooperation and/or testimony and/or culpibility.
UPDATE: As John Casper points out in the comments, emptywheel has some Armitage discussion going on at Next Hurrah that is certainly worth reading and contemplating as well. I hadn’t seen it when I was writing this morning, and really appreciate the heads up.
Speaking of running around in circles, we’ve gotten a lot of questions about the Leopold articles from last week — and all the possibilities about Rove being indicted or not and what is going on now, etc., etc. Tim Grieve of Salon spoke with Mark Ash of Truthout.org about the reporting, and I wanted to post a link to the discussion for everyone. (H/T to Jeralyn for catching the interview.)
I talked a little bit about legal questions that I had on this in comments the other day, but I wanted to reiterate one in particular here: when you have a "sealed indictment," it is sealed — as in not publicly available — for a reason. We used them a lot in drug conspiracy cases, where you had evidence of lower level people but were still working the investigation up the chain, and you would indict a lower level dealer when you had evidence on them, seal the indictment so as not to tip off higher level dealer/distributors, and then unseal the entire batch of indictments if and when you completed the investigation or you had to make an arrest on someone you thought was going to flee the jurisdiction.
Once you talk about an indictment that is under seal with anyone, you break that seal and the information contained within the indictment can become public. Which, frankly, defeats the whole point of having a sealed indictment in the first place.
Now, how this fits into Jason Leopold’s reporting is murky in my mind – because I have no idea who his sources might be on this and how much legal knowledge they might have and/or what they may have said to him or how they said it. iAnd it is awfully tough reading someone else’s anonymously sourced tea leaves, to be perfectly honest.
As a prosecutor, you often prepare what is known as a "bill of particulars" (at least, that’s what we called it in my jurisdiction, anyway) or a draft indictment for review by the grand jury prior to asking them to indict someone. The draft is a sort of blueprint of the evidence and chanrges that you want to emphasize the the jurors as what you’d like to see indicted — but the grand jury gets to vote on each charge separately and can make changes and/or amendments as they see fit when they deliberate and vote.
It is entirely possible that this sort of draft may have been shown to Rove’s legal team — although you don’t usually do so, since it is the province of the grand jury to decide on charges, not the prosecutor, and you try not to imply otherwise since that would be overstepping your bounds and prosecutors really try not to do that. At least, I did anyway. (But I have absolutely no evidence that this happened through any of my sources — I’m just throwing it out there as a possible thing that may or may not have happened, so please don’t everyone run around thinking that it did happen — just that it may be one possible explanation on last week’s rampant speculation aroudn the blogosphere, and that’s all.)
That doesn’t mean that you don’t discuss with defense counsel prior to seeking an indictment that his/her client is facing charges under a number of potential areas of law — and would they like to discuss a potential plea to what is known as an "information" (or list of charges to which the defendant pleas rather than be indicted — it’s like the list that they would have seen in an indictment, just usually lesser than the whole list that would have been requested fromt he grand jury, in exchange for whatever plea agreement is reached, including cooperation and testimony most often).
But again, not knowing who any of Jason’s sources were/are, it’s impossible to say if this was meant or something else or what. I agree with Jane that I think it is wonderful that Jason offered to out his sources if they proved to have steered him wrong. That’s way more than we ever got out of La Diva Judy and her WMD debacle, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens with that after his announcment that he would out any sources that steered him wrong during a radio interview. From the Salon interview, it looks like that’s not going to happen any time soon, since they are taking a wait and see attitude after again speaking with their sources and monitoring what they see in the Fitzgerald investigation, but I wanted to throw that out there since I hadn’t commented on that aspect yet. (Joshua Frank has more thoughts, from a self-confessed "friend of Leopold" perspective, which I also wanted to note here for our readers.)
As I have repeatedly said here, I have had no sourcing to tell me that the reports are valid or invalid — although I would note for the record that there was no official announcement on any of this from Fitzgerald and his team last week – so I’m just watching the news and reaching out to my sources — as is Jane — as we go along.
Which, considering its a secret grand jury investigation with incredibly high political stakes and a lot of behind-the-scenes rumors and backstabbing and machinations that would make Machiavelli blush, is a lot to sift through on any given day, even as we wait to see what the ongoing investigation may or may not turn up in the end.
As someone who spent a helluva lot of her life dealing with the criminal justice system, I can tell you that investigations can take a long, long time — but when the pieces fall into place, things can go pretty quickly after that. I honestly have no idea what stage Fitzgerald is at in this investigation — wish I had some secret, inside track on that, but I don’t have one other than reading Murray Waas’ excellent tea leaves along with the rest of you — but I promise that if we hear news on that front at any point from sources that we consider reliable and solid, you guys will be among the first to know. More to come in Part II…
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Sunday, May 21, 2006
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Libby lawyers oppose Cheney notes as evidence
Defense attorneys argue vice president’s ex-aide hadn’t seen document
By Joel Seidman
Producer
NBC News
Updated: 6:44 p.m. CT May 20, 2006
Attorneys for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby attacked plans by prosecutors in the CIA leak case to submit a New York Times op-ed containing handwritten notes by Vice President Dick Cheney.
In a court filing late Friday night, Libby’s lawyers argued that their client testified before the grand jury that he did not see this document until it was shown to him by the FBI in November 2003.
The op-ed article by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, which was published July 6, 2003, argued that the Bush administration “twisted” intelligence “to exaggerate the Iraqi threat” in the run-up to a U.S.-led invasion.
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has argued in court filings, that the Cheney’s notes on the op-ed article expressed the concern he had about assertions made by Wilson, which concluded that the Bush administration somehow, “twisted” some intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.
Those concerns about the merits of Wilson’s findings, after his trip to Niger, included the notation by the Vice President questioning whether Wilson’s wife had “sent him on a junket.”
Fitzgerald has argued that the op-ed triggered a campaign in the White House to discredit Wilson’s finding which included outing Wilson’s wife, a classified CIA agent, to reporters.
Libby’s attorney’s say the government evidently wants to argue to the jury that “facts that were viewed as important” by the vice president would have been important to Libby too, and that the Cheney’s notes can be used to show what Libby focused on during July 2003.
“These arguments are tantamount to an acknowledgment that the state of mind of witnesses other than Mr. Libby will be important at trial,” Libby’s lawyers write in their 10-page court filing.
Libby’s attorneys also question how Fitzgerald will authenticate the handwritten notes attributed to the Cheney if they do not call him as a witness.
The defense says they are entitled to obtain additional documents concerning what other government officials might have learned about Wilson’s trip, whether they were involved in the subsequent finger pointing among government agencies that resulted from Wilson’s allegations; how they learned Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, worked at the CIA; whether they thought her employment status was classified; and whether they discussed Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA with officials other than Libby.
Libby’s attorneys write, “The jury will not be able to judge the relative importance of Mr. Wilson’s allegations and the peripheral nature of information about his wife if it does not understand the full factual context that Mr. Libby and others confronted.”
Libby’s lawyers acknowledge concerns expressed by Judge Reggie Walton that he would not allow a debate at trial about the legitimacy of the decision to go to war in Iraq.
“Our focus on Mr. Wilson’s accusations does not signal an intention to use this case to reargue the reasons why the United States invaded Iraq,” defense attorneys wrote.
They also acknowledge that given that a jury will made up of Washington, D.C., residents, “such an approach would be a foolish and self-destructive trial strategy.”
Libby’s attorneys argue that their only reason to show what their client and other witnesses were doing in June and July of 2003 in response to Wilson’s charges is for a jury to “understand that Mr. Libby may have been confused or may have misrecollected facts in good faith, and did not act with a specific intent to give false testimony.” They write that only with such context will the jury appreciate that “Mr. Libby did not need to attack Mr. Wilson personally to rebut his allegations, because the administration had clear factual support for its position that Mr. Wilson’s criticisms were wrong.”
Libby, who was then Cheney’s chief of staff, is charged with perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice during the leak investigation. The trial is set to begin in January 2007 .
LINK
By Joel Seidman
Producer
NBC News
Updated: 6:44 p.m. CT May 20, 2006
Attorneys for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby attacked plans by prosecutors in the CIA leak case to submit a New York Times op-ed containing handwritten notes by Vice President Dick Cheney.
In a court filing late Friday night, Libby’s lawyers argued that their client testified before the grand jury that he did not see this document until it was shown to him by the FBI in November 2003.
The op-ed article by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, which was published July 6, 2003, argued that the Bush administration “twisted” intelligence “to exaggerate the Iraqi threat” in the run-up to a U.S.-led invasion.
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has argued in court filings, that the Cheney’s notes on the op-ed article expressed the concern he had about assertions made by Wilson, which concluded that the Bush administration somehow, “twisted” some intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.
Those concerns about the merits of Wilson’s findings, after his trip to Niger, included the notation by the Vice President questioning whether Wilson’s wife had “sent him on a junket.”
Fitzgerald has argued that the op-ed triggered a campaign in the White House to discredit Wilson’s finding which included outing Wilson’s wife, a classified CIA agent, to reporters.
Libby’s attorney’s say the government evidently wants to argue to the jury that “facts that were viewed as important” by the vice president would have been important to Libby too, and that the Cheney’s notes can be used to show what Libby focused on during July 2003.
“These arguments are tantamount to an acknowledgment that the state of mind of witnesses other than Mr. Libby will be important at trial,” Libby’s lawyers write in their 10-page court filing.
Libby’s attorneys also question how Fitzgerald will authenticate the handwritten notes attributed to the Cheney if they do not call him as a witness.
The defense says they are entitled to obtain additional documents concerning what other government officials might have learned about Wilson’s trip, whether they were involved in the subsequent finger pointing among government agencies that resulted from Wilson’s allegations; how they learned Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, worked at the CIA; whether they thought her employment status was classified; and whether they discussed Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA with officials other than Libby.
Libby’s attorneys write, “The jury will not be able to judge the relative importance of Mr. Wilson’s allegations and the peripheral nature of information about his wife if it does not understand the full factual context that Mr. Libby and others confronted.”
Libby’s lawyers acknowledge concerns expressed by Judge Reggie Walton that he would not allow a debate at trial about the legitimacy of the decision to go to war in Iraq.
“Our focus on Mr. Wilson’s accusations does not signal an intention to use this case to reargue the reasons why the United States invaded Iraq,” defense attorneys wrote.
They also acknowledge that given that a jury will made up of Washington, D.C., residents, “such an approach would be a foolish and self-destructive trial strategy.”
Libby’s attorneys argue that their only reason to show what their client and other witnesses were doing in June and July of 2003 in response to Wilson’s charges is for a jury to “understand that Mr. Libby may have been confused or may have misrecollected facts in good faith, and did not act with a specific intent to give false testimony.” They write that only with such context will the jury appreciate that “Mr. Libby did not need to attack Mr. Wilson personally to rebut his allegations, because the administration had clear factual support for its position that Mr. Wilson’s criticisms were wrong.”
Libby, who was then Cheney’s chief of staff, is charged with perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice during the leak investigation. The trial is set to begin in January 2007 .
LINK
Monday, May 15, 2006
A Fresh Focus on Cheney
Handwritten notes by the Vice President surface in the Fitzgerald probe.
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
Updated: 9:56 a.m. ET May 14, 2006
May 13, 2006 - The role of Vice President Dick Cheney in the criminal case stemming from the outing of White House critic Joseph Wilson's CIA wife is likely to get fresh attention as a result of newly disclosed notes showing that Cheney personally asked whether Wilson had been sent by his wife on a "junket" to Africa.
Cheney's notes, written on the margins of a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed column by former ambassador Joseph Wilson, were included as part of a filing Friday night by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the perjury and obstruction case against ex-Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby.
The notes, Fitzgerald said in his filing, show that Cheney and Libby were "acutely focused" on the Wilson column and on rebutting his criticisms of the White House's handling of pre-Iraq war intelligence. In the column, which created a firestorm after its publication, Wilson wrote that he had been dispatched by the CIA without pay to Niger in February 2002 to investigate an intelligence report that Iraq was seeking uranium from the African country for a nuclear bomb. Wilson said he was told Cheney had asked about the intelligence, but the White House subsequently ignored his findings debunking the Niger claims.
In the margins of the op-ed, Cheney jotted out a series of questions that seemed to challenge many of Wilson's assertions as well as the legitimacy of his CIA-sponsored trip to Africa: "Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb. [sic] to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"
It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for Cheney's own notes to be made public. The notes—apparently obtained as a result of a grand jury subpoena—would appear to make Cheney an even more central witness than had been previously thought in the criminal probe. Fitzgerald's prosecution has created continued problems for the White House. Karl Rove, the President Bush's chief political adviser, recently made his fifth grand jury appearance in the case and remains under scrutiny while Fitzgerald weighs whether to file criminal charges against him. For now, Libby is the only figure charged in the case.
Lea Ann McBride, a spokeswoman for the vice president, declined to comment on the newly disclosed notes. "We continue to cooperate in the investigation as we have since its inception," she said.
Fitzgerald first alleged that Cheney had questioned whether Wilson's trip was a "junket" in a court filing last month. In that filing, Fitzgerald also asserted that the vice president, acting with the approval of President Bush, had authorized Libby to disclose portions of the classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq to rebut some of Wilson's claims.
But the notes provide significant new context to that assertion. They show the vice president personally raised questions about Wilson's trip right after the publication of the Wilson column—and five days before Libby confirmed to Time reporter Matt Cooper that he had "heard" that Wilson's wife, former CIA agent Valerie Plame, had played a role in sending him to Africa.
Libby, questioned by the FBI and by federal prosecutors in two grand jury appearances, denied providing that confirmation to Cooper and insisted he had heard about Wilson's wife a day or two earlier from NBC News "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert—an account that Fitzgerald charged in an indictment last October was a lie. Fitzgerald in his court filing indicated he plans to introduce a copy of Cheney's annotated version of the Wilson column to show the vice president's interest in the circumstances surrounding Wilson's trip was an important matter to Libby that week and explains many of his actions. Those actions, according to the indictment, include discussing Plame's employment at the CIA—a matter Fitzgerald has said was classified at the time—with New York Times reporter Judy Miller on July 8, 2003.
Fitzgerald also said in his court filing that he plans to introduce a copy of Robert Novak's July 14, 2003, newspaper column that first identified Plame as a CIA "operative" who worked issues related to weapons of mass destruction. Fitzgerald said he will do so in order to introduce evidence about a series of conversations that he argued could undercut one of Libby's principal defenses: that he had no reason to believe Plame's employment was a sensitive matter and therefore had no reason to lie to the grand jury about when and with whom he spoke about it.
According to Fitzgerald's filing, on the day that the Novak column was published, a CIA official was asked in Libby's presence by another Cheney aide whether he had read the column. The CIA official had not. But shortly thereafter, the unidentified CIA official discussed in Libby's presence "the dangers posed by disclosure of the CIA affiliation of one of its employees as had occurred in the Novak column," Fitzgerald wrote.
This evidence, Fitzgerald added, "directly contradicts" the assertion by defense lawyers that Libby "had no motive to lie" to the FBI and to the grand jury because he "thought that neither he nor anyone else had done anything wrong." Instead, Fitzgerald asserts, "the evidence about the conversation concerning the Novak column provides a strong motive for the defendant to provide false information and testimony about his disclosures to reporters."
A spokeswoman for Libby declined comment on the filing.
LINK
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
Updated: 9:56 a.m. ET May 14, 2006
May 13, 2006 - The role of Vice President Dick Cheney in the criminal case stemming from the outing of White House critic Joseph Wilson's CIA wife is likely to get fresh attention as a result of newly disclosed notes showing that Cheney personally asked whether Wilson had been sent by his wife on a "junket" to Africa.
Cheney's notes, written on the margins of a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed column by former ambassador Joseph Wilson, were included as part of a filing Friday night by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the perjury and obstruction case against ex-Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby.
The notes, Fitzgerald said in his filing, show that Cheney and Libby were "acutely focused" on the Wilson column and on rebutting his criticisms of the White House's handling of pre-Iraq war intelligence. In the column, which created a firestorm after its publication, Wilson wrote that he had been dispatched by the CIA without pay to Niger in February 2002 to investigate an intelligence report that Iraq was seeking uranium from the African country for a nuclear bomb. Wilson said he was told Cheney had asked about the intelligence, but the White House subsequently ignored his findings debunking the Niger claims.
In the margins of the op-ed, Cheney jotted out a series of questions that seemed to challenge many of Wilson's assertions as well as the legitimacy of his CIA-sponsored trip to Africa: "Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an Amb. [sic] to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"
It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for Cheney's own notes to be made public. The notes—apparently obtained as a result of a grand jury subpoena—would appear to make Cheney an even more central witness than had been previously thought in the criminal probe. Fitzgerald's prosecution has created continued problems for the White House. Karl Rove, the President Bush's chief political adviser, recently made his fifth grand jury appearance in the case and remains under scrutiny while Fitzgerald weighs whether to file criminal charges against him. For now, Libby is the only figure charged in the case.
Lea Ann McBride, a spokeswoman for the vice president, declined to comment on the newly disclosed notes. "We continue to cooperate in the investigation as we have since its inception," she said.
Fitzgerald first alleged that Cheney had questioned whether Wilson's trip was a "junket" in a court filing last month. In that filing, Fitzgerald also asserted that the vice president, acting with the approval of President Bush, had authorized Libby to disclose portions of the classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq to rebut some of Wilson's claims.
But the notes provide significant new context to that assertion. They show the vice president personally raised questions about Wilson's trip right after the publication of the Wilson column—and five days before Libby confirmed to Time reporter Matt Cooper that he had "heard" that Wilson's wife, former CIA agent Valerie Plame, had played a role in sending him to Africa.
Libby, questioned by the FBI and by federal prosecutors in two grand jury appearances, denied providing that confirmation to Cooper and insisted he had heard about Wilson's wife a day or two earlier from NBC News "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert—an account that Fitzgerald charged in an indictment last October was a lie. Fitzgerald in his court filing indicated he plans to introduce a copy of Cheney's annotated version of the Wilson column to show the vice president's interest in the circumstances surrounding Wilson's trip was an important matter to Libby that week and explains many of his actions. Those actions, according to the indictment, include discussing Plame's employment at the CIA—a matter Fitzgerald has said was classified at the time—with New York Times reporter Judy Miller on July 8, 2003.
Fitzgerald also said in his court filing that he plans to introduce a copy of Robert Novak's July 14, 2003, newspaper column that first identified Plame as a CIA "operative" who worked issues related to weapons of mass destruction. Fitzgerald said he will do so in order to introduce evidence about a series of conversations that he argued could undercut one of Libby's principal defenses: that he had no reason to believe Plame's employment was a sensitive matter and therefore had no reason to lie to the grand jury about when and with whom he spoke about it.
According to Fitzgerald's filing, on the day that the Novak column was published, a CIA official was asked in Libby's presence by another Cheney aide whether he had read the column. The CIA official had not. But shortly thereafter, the unidentified CIA official discussed in Libby's presence "the dangers posed by disclosure of the CIA affiliation of one of its employees as had occurred in the Novak column," Fitzgerald wrote.
This evidence, Fitzgerald added, "directly contradicts" the assertion by defense lawyers that Libby "had no motive to lie" to the FBI and to the grand jury because he "thought that neither he nor anyone else had done anything wrong." Instead, Fitzgerald asserts, "the evidence about the conversation concerning the Novak column provides a strong motive for the defendant to provide false information and testimony about his disclosures to reporters."
A spokeswoman for Libby declined comment on the filing.
LINK
Rove Indictment?
I haven't been able to confirm what Jason Leopold has reported:
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove.
During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning.
Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, did not return a call for comment. Sources said Fitzgerald was in Washington, DC, Friday and met with Luskin for about 15 hours to go over the charges against Rove, which include perjury and lying to investigators about how and when Rove discovered that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative and whether he shared that information with reporters, sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said.
It was still unknown Saturday whether Fitzgerald charged Rove with a more serious obstruction of justice charge. Sources close to the case said Friday that it appeared very likely that an obstruction charge against Rove would be included with charges of perjury and lying to investigators.
An announcement by Fitzgerald is expected to come this week, sources close to the case said. However, the day and time is unknown. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the special prosecutor was unavailable for comment. In the past, Samborn said he could not comment on the case.
But if he's on target, this is huge news.
LINK
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove.
During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning.
Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, did not return a call for comment. Sources said Fitzgerald was in Washington, DC, Friday and met with Luskin for about 15 hours to go over the charges against Rove, which include perjury and lying to investigators about how and when Rove discovered that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative and whether he shared that information with reporters, sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said.
It was still unknown Saturday whether Fitzgerald charged Rove with a more serious obstruction of justice charge. Sources close to the case said Friday that it appeared very likely that an obstruction charge against Rove would be included with charges of perjury and lying to investigators.
An announcement by Fitzgerald is expected to come this week, sources close to the case said. However, the day and time is unknown. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the special prosecutor was unavailable for comment. In the past, Samborn said he could not comment on the case.
But if he's on target, this is huge news.
LINK
Abramoff cohort spent millions on Sussex homes
As a Rehoboth lifeguard last year, he made $11.35 an hour
By CRIS BARRISH
The News Journal
05/14/2006
Anthony Wiles became suspicious four years ago when a lifeguard named Michael Scanlon offered to pay cash for Wiles' $4.8 million home in Dewey Beach.
Wiles insisted that the baby-faced 31-year-old prove he could afford the 7,000-square-foot oceanfront compound built in the 1940s by philanthropist Alexis Felix du Pont Sr.
So Scanlon produced a bank statement showing he had "around $10 million," Wiles recalled.
"He told me he had done some lobbying for the Indian tribes and they paid him a large amount for casino work. I knew their casinos were profitable in Florida, and it appeared to be a legitimate way to get the money.
"Obviously it wasn't."
Scanlon and once-powerful lobbyist Jack Abramoff recently pleaded guilty in federal court to running a scam on several Indian tribes between 2000 and 2004. The two collected more than $80 million from the tribes while conspiring to defraud them and bribe government officials.
While bilking the tribes, Scanlon embarked on an extravagant real estate spree in Sussex County, buying and selling millions of dollars worth of real estate and capitalizing on the booming market.
Though Scanlon faces up to five years in prison and must pay up to $19.7 million in restitution, former federal prosecutor Melanie Sloan predicted Scanlon could emerge from the scandal a multimillionaire.
"Commit a great fraud, enrich yourself, go to jail for a while and get out rich," said Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "He would hardly be the first person to do it, but it does seem pretty outrageous."
Scanlon and a corporation he controls bought 10 properties for $18.7 million from May 2001 through January 2005 -- and paid $12.2 million in cash, a News Journal review of Sussex County property records found.
The properties included five multimillion dollar homes -- the cedar shake former du Pont mansion, two in Rehoboth Beach and two in Henlopen Acres. He also bought four properties in Georgetown -- two homes, a downtown office-apartment complex and an office park off U.S. 113.
Scanlon has since sold three homes -- for $4.5 million more than he paid, records show. Six properties are still in his name.
His lavish lifestyle included three leased airplanes, one of them a Gulfstream jet, a penthouse suite at Washington's Ritz-Carlton, and a hilltop estate in the Caribbean island of St. Barts, according to friends and published reports. He also confounded those close to him in 2002 by breaking off his engagement to a U.S. State Department aide, for whom he had bought the Dewey Beach home, and marrying a Sussex woman seven years his junior.
Scanlon would not agree to an interview.
His attorney, Stephen L. Braga, said his client's tribal earnings were "not the proceeds of any crime," although court records show the tribes first hired Scanlon at Abramoff's urging, as part of the duo's criminal plot.
Scanlon spent some tribal profits to buy properties, Braga said, plus other earnings from clients the attorney would not identify.
Sloan, a Delaware native, countered that Scanlon took "outrageous" profits from Indian clients, and with Abramoff "took relatively unsophisticated clients and just gouged them."
Scanlon's illegal activities have disgusted many in Sussex who knew and liked him.
Rehoboth lifeguard boss Kent Buckson said beach patrol members had been honored in 2004 when they flew to a national competition in Daytona Beach, Fla., on a jet provided by Scanlon.
"He pretty much had us all duped," Buckson said. "I feel set up, suckered. Every one of us who went on that airplane were under the complete impression it was his."
Duo's scam uncovered
Scanlon, who grew up in the Washington area, began spending summers at the Delaware shore as a teenager in the mid-1980s.
While in high school, he joined the Bethany Beach lifeguard crew, where he was known by a middle name, Sean. Others called him "Opie" for his resemblance to Ron Howard's character in the television series "The Andy Griffith Show."
His family was part of a wave of Washingtonian-area residents descending on the Delaware shore -- giving Rehoboth its reputation as "The Nation's Summer Capital."
The money and the people who poured en masse into the coastal towns -- Rehoboth, Dewey, Lewes, Bethany and Fenwick Island -- fueled a real estate rush that since 1990 has boosted Sussex County's population 56 percent and transformed aging seaside cottages into million-dollar properties.
Like many Washingtonians, Scanlon invested in the Sussex coast.
In 1999, he and his first wife, Carrie Anne, along with his older sister, Erin, and her husband, paid $165,000 for a bungalow on West Street in Dewey. He was then press secretary for U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican who later became House majority leader.
After leaving DeLay's office that year and forming the Capital Campaign Strategies public relations firm, Scanlon soon teamed up with Abramoff, one of Washington's most politically connected lobbyists.
In a scheme they called "gimme five" -- the pair's e-mail code word for kickback -- Abramoff convinced tribal clients to hire Scanlon to help secure licenses or fight off competition. The two agreed to keep their financial relationship a secret from the tribes.
By then, divorced with a young son, Scanlon rented space at 53 Baltimore Ave., a clapboard home near Rehoboth's boardwalk. There he ran American International Center Inc., touted by its Web site as a nonprofit agency aiming to "influence global paradigms in an increasingly complex world."
Scanlon hired two Rehoboth pals -- a lifeguard and a yoga instructor -- as "high-powered" directors, the Web site said, but gave them minimal job duties, according to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs co-chaired by Arizona Sen. John McCain.
Displaying what McCain has called "insatiable greed," Scanlon charged the tribes exorbitant fees using bogus invoices and padded bills, the Senate panel found. Scanlon spent a small fraction on actual work, then split the difference with Abramoff after routing some money through American International Center.
From June 2001 to April 2004, for example, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians paid Scanlon's firm $14.8 million, prosecutors charged. Scanlon and Abramoff split $12.8 million in profits.
The Choctaws would not comment for this article, but in testimony before the Senate panel, Donald Kilgore, the tribe's attorney general, called the scheme "a deliberate attempt to defraud a client."
The U.S. Justice Department, which is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into lobbying, also would not comment. When a grand jury charged Scanlon in November, court documents said he and Abramoff conspired "to enrich themselves ... through corrupt means."
The partners also expressed contempt for their tribal clients in e-mails made public by the Senate panel.
In one e-mail exchange about the Choctaws, Abramoff wrote, "We need to get some $ from those monkeys."
When Scanlon pledged to "take care of it," Abramoff responded, "You iz da man."
Paying millions, marrying
With his newfound wealth, Scanlon began shopping for pricey real estate in 2001.
He paid $1.6 million cash that November for a five-bedroom canal-front home in Henlopen Acres. The neighborhood bordering Rehoboth, replete with graceful custom homes, expansive lawns and towering pines, is one of the beach's most prestigious.
Though he spent tens of thousands of dollars on renovations, Scanlon never moved in, friends said. Instead, he bought the Dewey beachfront home as a gift for fiancee Emily Miller, whom he met while both were press secretaries for DeLay.
After paying $4.8 million cash in March 2002, he hired premier designer Mark Showell Interiors to remodel in anticipation of their marriage later that year. But a few months before the wedding, the couple broke up and Scanlon started dating a Sussex woman named Brandy McMahon.
The daughter of a local builder, McMahon was a Cape Henlopen High School field hockey star who graduated from Radford (Va.) University in 2000 with a marketing degree. The summer she and Scanlon met, McMahon was waiting tables at Rehoboth's Big Fish Grill.
By year's end, the two were married.
John Hughes, former Rehoboth mayor and now Delaware's environmental protection chief, said that when he dined at Big Fish, he often saw Scanlon, who usually sported a baseball cap.
"I was amazed that such a young guy who looked like a skateboard rat had so much money," recalled Hughes, a close friend of McMahon's parents. "I've spent a lifetime trying to pay for my house and this guy had made a great fortune in a short time."
Manning the stand
In contrast to his jet-setting Beltway lifestyle, Scanlon spent his summers in the sand. He worked as a full-time lifeguard from 2002 through 2005, manning a stand six days a week from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
Last year he earned $11.35 an hour, for a total of $5,126.
"He was an excellent lifeguard and interacted well with the public," Buckson said, and he performed several rescues, mainly of swimmers who ventured "near the jetties or in rough surf and got sucked out."
He hosted parties for the lifeguards and others at his oceanfront home. On one raucous occasion, some of Dewey's lifeguard stands ended up in the surf, spurring a complaint to Rehoboth officials. "He agreed to pay for the damage and that was the end to it," former Dewey Mayor Pat Wright said.
In other beach circles, Scanlon was known as kind and courteous.
Real estate attorney Barbara O'Leary, who handled a few of his property settlements, said Scanlon appeared to be another "nice young guy who happened to be successful," adding that it's not unheard of for someone in their 30s to pay cash for multimillion dollar Sussex properties.
The Rev. Max J. Wolf of All Saints Episcopal Church in Rehoboth said Scanlon bought backpacks and other supplies for poor students and stood out for including a prayer for the poor in his wedding service.
"I just know him as a generous, compassionate person," said Wolf, who called Scanlon a victim of Washington's corrupt political culture. "He got caught up in things he wishes he didn't."
Buying, selling property
When he wasn't lifeguarding, jogging, playing tennis or spending time in St. Barts or Washington, Scanlon was wheeling and dealing in Sussex.
In December 2002, Scanlon Capital Management, a limited liability corporation he formed that year, paid $6.3 million for two office complexes in Georgetown, the county seat in Sussex. He put down $1.26 million cash.
At the downtown complex, the Delaware state government is his main tenant, renting space for the Division of Child Support Enforcement and a center for adults with developmental disabilities.
Early in 2003, he paid cash for a $1.6 million home on Baltimore Avenue -- across the street from the American International Center -- and opened offices. He also sold the Henlopen Acres home for $2.8 million -- $1.2 million more than he paid.
The spree continued in 2004, even after The Washington Post published an article detailing tens of millions of dollars in fees that Scanlon and Abramoff had charged to the tribes.
Within the next two months he paid $255,000 cash for two rental homes on Georgetown's Pine Street. One of the homes, which are in a distressed section of town, is a rambling Victorian with peeling paint and debris on the porch. Two Spanish-speaking tenants said they did not know their landlord.
Mike McCarthy, who manages the properties, said Scanlon wants to build an office park on Pine Street but no plans have been submitted.
Also in 2004, Scanlon sold the former du Pont mansion to Anthony J. Capano, son of developer Joseph M. Capano, for $7.5 million -- $2.7 million more than Scanlon paid two years earlier.
Scanlon also paid $2.1 million cash for a Rehoboth landmark with an ocean view. Known locally as "The House of the Seven Gables," the house's distinctive architecture has made it a town attraction for decades.
By 2004 the lobbying controversy had become a full-blown scandal, with Senate hearings and the scrutiny of federal investigators.
Scanlon soon finished his spree. In January 2005, he paid $1.9 million cash for a Henlopen Acres ranch home. The property was titled in his wife's name "for legitimate estate planning and project development reasons," attorney Braga said.
A few months later he sold the "Seven Gables" home -- for $495,000 more than he had paid.
'Deeply disturbing'
The investigation of Scanlon ended abruptly in November, when he was charged. Days later he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and bribery.
Now free on $5 million bail and cooperating with authorities, Scanlon's sentencing date could "be years away" because the probe is ongoing, Braga said.
As for Scanlon's properties, his plea bargain allows third parties such as Abramoff to pay part of the $19.7 million restitution. Braga said it's "impossible to know" if Scanlon will have to sell any. "He will do whatever is necessary, including the sale of real estate, in order to meet that commitment.''
There are no liens on Scanlon's properties, but he cannot sell any property without the government's permission, court records show.
In the meantime, Scanlon's plea deal hinges on providing federal authorities with "information, evidence and testimony, if required, concerning any matter."
That would include being a witness in any case brought against U.S. Rep. Robert W. Ney, R-Ohio. Ney has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing. But Scanlon and Abramoff have admitted giving gifts, including trips, meals and sports tickets, to Ney or his staff in exchange for favors for their clients.
Sloan, the former prosecutor, said Scanlon, by virtue of being the first key player to plead guilty in the case, received an attractive deal.
"This was a very serious felony," Sloan said, but getting Scanlon on their side was more important to investigators "because they had a lot more fish to catch and they wanted to go up the chain. His deal helped get Abramoff to plea. That's why he got such a good deal."
Since pleading guilty, Scanlon has been seen infrequently at the beach -- though in recent weeks he was spotted at a Brew Ha Ha!, a Bethany Beach fitness center and his favorite breakfast haunt, the Crystal Restaurant.
One April morning, Scanlon was reading a newspaper when the television above the Crystal's bar broadcast his face and a story on his crimes.
"He just looked up, then went back to his paper," one employee said. "No reaction at all."
Rehoboth officials, meanwhile, have rejected his request to return as a lifeguard this summer, Buckson said, fearing the prospect of television crews swarming over the beach should the scandal resurface in the news.
Hughes, Delaware's environmental control chief, said the entire affair has left him disillusioned.
"It's deeply disturbing," Hughes said, "a stone-cold illustration that appearances are not always real."
LINK
By CRIS BARRISH
The News Journal
05/14/2006
Anthony Wiles became suspicious four years ago when a lifeguard named Michael Scanlon offered to pay cash for Wiles' $4.8 million home in Dewey Beach.
Wiles insisted that the baby-faced 31-year-old prove he could afford the 7,000-square-foot oceanfront compound built in the 1940s by philanthropist Alexis Felix du Pont Sr.
So Scanlon produced a bank statement showing he had "around $10 million," Wiles recalled.
"He told me he had done some lobbying for the Indian tribes and they paid him a large amount for casino work. I knew their casinos were profitable in Florida, and it appeared to be a legitimate way to get the money.
"Obviously it wasn't."
Scanlon and once-powerful lobbyist Jack Abramoff recently pleaded guilty in federal court to running a scam on several Indian tribes between 2000 and 2004. The two collected more than $80 million from the tribes while conspiring to defraud them and bribe government officials.
While bilking the tribes, Scanlon embarked on an extravagant real estate spree in Sussex County, buying and selling millions of dollars worth of real estate and capitalizing on the booming market.
Though Scanlon faces up to five years in prison and must pay up to $19.7 million in restitution, former federal prosecutor Melanie Sloan predicted Scanlon could emerge from the scandal a multimillionaire.
"Commit a great fraud, enrich yourself, go to jail for a while and get out rich," said Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "He would hardly be the first person to do it, but it does seem pretty outrageous."
Scanlon and a corporation he controls bought 10 properties for $18.7 million from May 2001 through January 2005 -- and paid $12.2 million in cash, a News Journal review of Sussex County property records found.
The properties included five multimillion dollar homes -- the cedar shake former du Pont mansion, two in Rehoboth Beach and two in Henlopen Acres. He also bought four properties in Georgetown -- two homes, a downtown office-apartment complex and an office park off U.S. 113.
Scanlon has since sold three homes -- for $4.5 million more than he paid, records show. Six properties are still in his name.
His lavish lifestyle included three leased airplanes, one of them a Gulfstream jet, a penthouse suite at Washington's Ritz-Carlton, and a hilltop estate in the Caribbean island of St. Barts, according to friends and published reports. He also confounded those close to him in 2002 by breaking off his engagement to a U.S. State Department aide, for whom he had bought the Dewey Beach home, and marrying a Sussex woman seven years his junior.
Scanlon would not agree to an interview.
His attorney, Stephen L. Braga, said his client's tribal earnings were "not the proceeds of any crime," although court records show the tribes first hired Scanlon at Abramoff's urging, as part of the duo's criminal plot.
Scanlon spent some tribal profits to buy properties, Braga said, plus other earnings from clients the attorney would not identify.
Sloan, a Delaware native, countered that Scanlon took "outrageous" profits from Indian clients, and with Abramoff "took relatively unsophisticated clients and just gouged them."
Scanlon's illegal activities have disgusted many in Sussex who knew and liked him.
Rehoboth lifeguard boss Kent Buckson said beach patrol members had been honored in 2004 when they flew to a national competition in Daytona Beach, Fla., on a jet provided by Scanlon.
"He pretty much had us all duped," Buckson said. "I feel set up, suckered. Every one of us who went on that airplane were under the complete impression it was his."
Duo's scam uncovered
Scanlon, who grew up in the Washington area, began spending summers at the Delaware shore as a teenager in the mid-1980s.
While in high school, he joined the Bethany Beach lifeguard crew, where he was known by a middle name, Sean. Others called him "Opie" for his resemblance to Ron Howard's character in the television series "The Andy Griffith Show."
His family was part of a wave of Washingtonian-area residents descending on the Delaware shore -- giving Rehoboth its reputation as "The Nation's Summer Capital."
The money and the people who poured en masse into the coastal towns -- Rehoboth, Dewey, Lewes, Bethany and Fenwick Island -- fueled a real estate rush that since 1990 has boosted Sussex County's population 56 percent and transformed aging seaside cottages into million-dollar properties.
Like many Washingtonians, Scanlon invested in the Sussex coast.
In 1999, he and his first wife, Carrie Anne, along with his older sister, Erin, and her husband, paid $165,000 for a bungalow on West Street in Dewey. He was then press secretary for U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican who later became House majority leader.
After leaving DeLay's office that year and forming the Capital Campaign Strategies public relations firm, Scanlon soon teamed up with Abramoff, one of Washington's most politically connected lobbyists.
In a scheme they called "gimme five" -- the pair's e-mail code word for kickback -- Abramoff convinced tribal clients to hire Scanlon to help secure licenses or fight off competition. The two agreed to keep their financial relationship a secret from the tribes.
By then, divorced with a young son, Scanlon rented space at 53 Baltimore Ave., a clapboard home near Rehoboth's boardwalk. There he ran American International Center Inc., touted by its Web site as a nonprofit agency aiming to "influence global paradigms in an increasingly complex world."
Scanlon hired two Rehoboth pals -- a lifeguard and a yoga instructor -- as "high-powered" directors, the Web site said, but gave them minimal job duties, according to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs co-chaired by Arizona Sen. John McCain.
Displaying what McCain has called "insatiable greed," Scanlon charged the tribes exorbitant fees using bogus invoices and padded bills, the Senate panel found. Scanlon spent a small fraction on actual work, then split the difference with Abramoff after routing some money through American International Center.
From June 2001 to April 2004, for example, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians paid Scanlon's firm $14.8 million, prosecutors charged. Scanlon and Abramoff split $12.8 million in profits.
The Choctaws would not comment for this article, but in testimony before the Senate panel, Donald Kilgore, the tribe's attorney general, called the scheme "a deliberate attempt to defraud a client."
The U.S. Justice Department, which is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into lobbying, also would not comment. When a grand jury charged Scanlon in November, court documents said he and Abramoff conspired "to enrich themselves ... through corrupt means."
The partners also expressed contempt for their tribal clients in e-mails made public by the Senate panel.
In one e-mail exchange about the Choctaws, Abramoff wrote, "We need to get some $ from those monkeys."
When Scanlon pledged to "take care of it," Abramoff responded, "You iz da man."
Paying millions, marrying
With his newfound wealth, Scanlon began shopping for pricey real estate in 2001.
He paid $1.6 million cash that November for a five-bedroom canal-front home in Henlopen Acres. The neighborhood bordering Rehoboth, replete with graceful custom homes, expansive lawns and towering pines, is one of the beach's most prestigious.
Though he spent tens of thousands of dollars on renovations, Scanlon never moved in, friends said. Instead, he bought the Dewey beachfront home as a gift for fiancee Emily Miller, whom he met while both were press secretaries for DeLay.
After paying $4.8 million cash in March 2002, he hired premier designer Mark Showell Interiors to remodel in anticipation of their marriage later that year. But a few months before the wedding, the couple broke up and Scanlon started dating a Sussex woman named Brandy McMahon.
The daughter of a local builder, McMahon was a Cape Henlopen High School field hockey star who graduated from Radford (Va.) University in 2000 with a marketing degree. The summer she and Scanlon met, McMahon was waiting tables at Rehoboth's Big Fish Grill.
By year's end, the two were married.
John Hughes, former Rehoboth mayor and now Delaware's environmental protection chief, said that when he dined at Big Fish, he often saw Scanlon, who usually sported a baseball cap.
"I was amazed that such a young guy who looked like a skateboard rat had so much money," recalled Hughes, a close friend of McMahon's parents. "I've spent a lifetime trying to pay for my house and this guy had made a great fortune in a short time."
Manning the stand
In contrast to his jet-setting Beltway lifestyle, Scanlon spent his summers in the sand. He worked as a full-time lifeguard from 2002 through 2005, manning a stand six days a week from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
Last year he earned $11.35 an hour, for a total of $5,126.
"He was an excellent lifeguard and interacted well with the public," Buckson said, and he performed several rescues, mainly of swimmers who ventured "near the jetties or in rough surf and got sucked out."
He hosted parties for the lifeguards and others at his oceanfront home. On one raucous occasion, some of Dewey's lifeguard stands ended up in the surf, spurring a complaint to Rehoboth officials. "He agreed to pay for the damage and that was the end to it," former Dewey Mayor Pat Wright said.
In other beach circles, Scanlon was known as kind and courteous.
Real estate attorney Barbara O'Leary, who handled a few of his property settlements, said Scanlon appeared to be another "nice young guy who happened to be successful," adding that it's not unheard of for someone in their 30s to pay cash for multimillion dollar Sussex properties.
The Rev. Max J. Wolf of All Saints Episcopal Church in Rehoboth said Scanlon bought backpacks and other supplies for poor students and stood out for including a prayer for the poor in his wedding service.
"I just know him as a generous, compassionate person," said Wolf, who called Scanlon a victim of Washington's corrupt political culture. "He got caught up in things he wishes he didn't."
Buying, selling property
When he wasn't lifeguarding, jogging, playing tennis or spending time in St. Barts or Washington, Scanlon was wheeling and dealing in Sussex.
In December 2002, Scanlon Capital Management, a limited liability corporation he formed that year, paid $6.3 million for two office complexes in Georgetown, the county seat in Sussex. He put down $1.26 million cash.
At the downtown complex, the Delaware state government is his main tenant, renting space for the Division of Child Support Enforcement and a center for adults with developmental disabilities.
Early in 2003, he paid cash for a $1.6 million home on Baltimore Avenue -- across the street from the American International Center -- and opened offices. He also sold the Henlopen Acres home for $2.8 million -- $1.2 million more than he paid.
The spree continued in 2004, even after The Washington Post published an article detailing tens of millions of dollars in fees that Scanlon and Abramoff had charged to the tribes.
Within the next two months he paid $255,000 cash for two rental homes on Georgetown's Pine Street. One of the homes, which are in a distressed section of town, is a rambling Victorian with peeling paint and debris on the porch. Two Spanish-speaking tenants said they did not know their landlord.
Mike McCarthy, who manages the properties, said Scanlon wants to build an office park on Pine Street but no plans have been submitted.
Also in 2004, Scanlon sold the former du Pont mansion to Anthony J. Capano, son of developer Joseph M. Capano, for $7.5 million -- $2.7 million more than Scanlon paid two years earlier.
Scanlon also paid $2.1 million cash for a Rehoboth landmark with an ocean view. Known locally as "The House of the Seven Gables," the house's distinctive architecture has made it a town attraction for decades.
By 2004 the lobbying controversy had become a full-blown scandal, with Senate hearings and the scrutiny of federal investigators.
Scanlon soon finished his spree. In January 2005, he paid $1.9 million cash for a Henlopen Acres ranch home. The property was titled in his wife's name "for legitimate estate planning and project development reasons," attorney Braga said.
A few months later he sold the "Seven Gables" home -- for $495,000 more than he had paid.
'Deeply disturbing'
The investigation of Scanlon ended abruptly in November, when he was charged. Days later he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and bribery.
Now free on $5 million bail and cooperating with authorities, Scanlon's sentencing date could "be years away" because the probe is ongoing, Braga said.
As for Scanlon's properties, his plea bargain allows third parties such as Abramoff to pay part of the $19.7 million restitution. Braga said it's "impossible to know" if Scanlon will have to sell any. "He will do whatever is necessary, including the sale of real estate, in order to meet that commitment.''
There are no liens on Scanlon's properties, but he cannot sell any property without the government's permission, court records show.
In the meantime, Scanlon's plea deal hinges on providing federal authorities with "information, evidence and testimony, if required, concerning any matter."
That would include being a witness in any case brought against U.S. Rep. Robert W. Ney, R-Ohio. Ney has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing. But Scanlon and Abramoff have admitted giving gifts, including trips, meals and sports tickets, to Ney or his staff in exchange for favors for their clients.
Sloan, the former prosecutor, said Scanlon, by virtue of being the first key player to plead guilty in the case, received an attractive deal.
"This was a very serious felony," Sloan said, but getting Scanlon on their side was more important to investigators "because they had a lot more fish to catch and they wanted to go up the chain. His deal helped get Abramoff to plea. That's why he got such a good deal."
Since pleading guilty, Scanlon has been seen infrequently at the beach -- though in recent weeks he was spotted at a Brew Ha Ha!, a Bethany Beach fitness center and his favorite breakfast haunt, the Crystal Restaurant.
One April morning, Scanlon was reading a newspaper when the television above the Crystal's bar broadcast his face and a story on his crimes.
"He just looked up, then went back to his paper," one employee said. "No reaction at all."
Rehoboth officials, meanwhile, have rejected his request to return as a lifeguard this summer, Buckson said, fearing the prospect of television crews swarming over the beach should the scandal resurface in the news.
Hughes, Delaware's environmental control chief, said the entire affair has left him disillusioned.
"It's deeply disturbing," Hughes said, "a stone-cold illustration that appearances are not always real."
LINK
Friday, May 12, 2006
Excerpt: Book suggests Libby's relationship with reporters spared him Plame coverage
Eric Boehlert
Published: Friday May 12, 2006
In the new book, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush, author Eric Boehlert claims that a good relationship with the press may have spared former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby unflattering coverage--and as a result, silenced the media on the unfolding Plame Affair. Reprinted with permission.
#
On the eve of the Scooter Libby indictments, a search of transcritps via the Nexis database revealed that since Sept 28, 2003, when the Washington Post first revealed there had been a concerted effort from inside the White House to try to discredit [Valerie Plame's husband] Joseph Wilson, CBS's award-winning investigative series 60 Minutes, as well as its spin-off 60 Minutes II, aired approximately 180 episodes during that time frame. Zero of them examined the Plame case. Over at NBC it was the same story with the network's primetime news magazine, Dateline. Between Sept. 28, 2003, and Oct. 28, 2005, Dateline aired approximately 100 episodes. Zero of them examined the Plame case. More of the same at ABC's Primetime Live, which aired approximinately 100 episodes. Zero addressed the Plame case. That meant in the 24 months after the Plame story broke, there were nearly 400 broadcasts of ABC, CBS and NBC's signature long form news programs and none reported on the leak investigation that reached into the most senior levels of the White House. It was worse if added into the equation was the fact that shows like 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes II include multiple topics within each broadcast. That meant between Sept. 2003 and Oct. 2005, the network news magazines aired at least 750 reports. None were about the most talked-about criminal investigation of the Bush presidency.
Fact: During the 24 months between Sept. 2003 and Sept. 2005, ABC's Nightline devoted just three full programs to the unfolding Plame investigation, for which a special assistant to the president was eventually indicted. On the night of the Libby indictmnets, Nightline devoted just five percent of its program to that topic. In the week following the criminal charges, Nightline never revisted the issue. Compare that to the fact that during the 24 months between Jan. 1994 and Jan. 1994, ABC's Nightline devoted 19 programs to the then-unfolding Whitewater real estate scandal. The MSM's stunning apathy on the Plame story did not reflect mainstream Americans, 79 percent of whom said the indictment of Libby was a matter of importance to the nation; a greater percentage than who said the same thing about 1998 charges that Clinton had lied under oath about his affair with Lewinsky.
Indeed, the contrast between the MSM's go-slow approach to the Valerie Plame leak investigation and the media's obsession for digging during the Clinton years was stunning. For instance, when it was alleged in 1998 that senior members of Clinton 's staff had privately contacted reporters to smear Monica Lewinksy's reputation for political gain, following news of her affair with the president, the news angle was covered with wild abandon. (The smear campaign was later proven to be non-existent.) A search of Nexis for articles and television reports between 1998 and 2000 regarding the Lewinsky saga that also contain mention of the White House and "smear campaign" retrieves approximately 850 matches. But a Nexis search for news accounts between September 2003 and October 2005 on the Plame investigation that mention the White House and a "smear campaign" [to discredit her husband Joseph Wilson] found just 150 matches.
Even after the Libby indictments were filed on Oct.28, Newsweek rushed to assure readers, in the second paragraph of its cover story, that Libby and Cheney likely never meant any harm by their Plame whispering campaign. Instead, relying on a hunch, the magazine reported, "It is much more likely they believed that they were somehow safeguarding the republic." [Emphasis added.] Elsewhere, the same article compared Libby to "to Roman centurions and Plato's Men of Silver." White House officials couldn't have said it better themselves.
Libby's soft-edge coverage was telegraphed in the weeks before. As legal trouble loomed for the VP's chief of staff in the fall, the MSM played nice as they introduced the Washington insider to readers and viewers with profile after profile detailing Libby's resume, from his college days right through his time in the White House. It was telling how many of those features forgot to mention the fact that during the 1990's Libby pocketed $2 million in fees working as the American attorney and chief advocate for Marc Rich, the disgraced billionaire fugitive. It was Libby who helped construct the sales pitch used to try to secure Rich a presidential pardon. The pardon was finally granted by President Clinton during his last days in office, which ignited one last free-wheeling Clinton press scandal. (Libby called Rich to congratulate him when he heard the good news of the pardon.) Prior to the indictments, it was the only real stain on Libby's impressive resume and cast some doubt of Libby's lofty, Man for All Seasons persona pushed in the press. And it certainly seemed worth at least a passing mention. But the MSM politely demurred.
On television, there was complete amnesia about Libby's work for Rich. During the week when the Libby indictments were announced and the story was treated as very big news (except, still, at the long form network news programs). The investigation generated constant chatter on the CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox, MSNBC, NPR, ABC, CBS, and NBC. In fact, the name Libby was mentioned more than 3,200 times according to TVEyes. The name of Marc Rich though, was mentioned just eight times.
In an Oct. 21, feature published online at Slate, titled "Who is Scooter Libby," the magazine painting a detailed portrait of Libby's professional life--"Lewis Libby is a graduate of Yale University and Columbia University School of Law"--but did not think the Rich/pardon angle needed to be included. Neither did the Knight Ridder News Service, which touched all the Libby bases in a 1,000-word profile and forgot to mention the Rich scandal. Ditto for a detailed, page 1 biography of Libby in the Baltimore Sun -- no Rich mention. Newsweek set aside seven full pages for its fawning Libby feature (he boasted "a heroic, romantic sense of his boss and his own role in history), but there was no mention of Rich. Meanwhile, on Oct. 23, the Washington Post published a gentle, page one Libby portrait, told exclusively through the eyes—and quotes--of his conservative, partisan friends, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz and Mary Matalin. There was not a discouraging word to be found in the 2,400-word valentine, in which readers learned Libby has a strong "sense of humor," was an "audacious novelist" who boasted "animated conviction," yet rarely lost sight of "the grandeur of his mission." (A reference to Rich's pardon was tucked into the 28th paragraph.) One week later the Post published another fawning Libby profile ("a self-effacing public servant, more interested in service than power ") which politely omitted any mention of Libby's $2 million payday courtesy of the billionaire fugitive.
Perhaps the most telling tidbit about Libby found in the Post profile though, was this: "He is diligent about returning reporters' calls." In other words, inside a White House that was notoriously close mouthed, reporters liked Libby and found him to be a useful source, which may have been another reason so many journalists seemed allergic to the idea of aggressively uncovering the two-year whodunit in which Libby had become entangled in.
LINK
Published: Friday May 12, 2006
In the new book, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush, author Eric Boehlert claims that a good relationship with the press may have spared former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby unflattering coverage--and as a result, silenced the media on the unfolding Plame Affair. Reprinted with permission.
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On the eve of the Scooter Libby indictments, a search of transcritps via the Nexis database revealed that since Sept 28, 2003, when the Washington Post first revealed there had been a concerted effort from inside the White House to try to discredit [Valerie Plame's husband] Joseph Wilson, CBS's award-winning investigative series 60 Minutes, as well as its spin-off 60 Minutes II, aired approximately 180 episodes during that time frame. Zero of them examined the Plame case. Over at NBC it was the same story with the network's primetime news magazine, Dateline. Between Sept. 28, 2003, and Oct. 28, 2005, Dateline aired approximately 100 episodes. Zero of them examined the Plame case. More of the same at ABC's Primetime Live, which aired approximinately 100 episodes. Zero addressed the Plame case. That meant in the 24 months after the Plame story broke, there were nearly 400 broadcasts of ABC, CBS and NBC's signature long form news programs and none reported on the leak investigation that reached into the most senior levels of the White House. It was worse if added into the equation was the fact that shows like 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes II include multiple topics within each broadcast. That meant between Sept. 2003 and Oct. 2005, the network news magazines aired at least 750 reports. None were about the most talked-about criminal investigation of the Bush presidency.
Fact: During the 24 months between Sept. 2003 and Sept. 2005, ABC's Nightline devoted just three full programs to the unfolding Plame investigation, for which a special assistant to the president was eventually indicted. On the night of the Libby indictmnets, Nightline devoted just five percent of its program to that topic. In the week following the criminal charges, Nightline never revisted the issue. Compare that to the fact that during the 24 months between Jan. 1994 and Jan. 1994, ABC's Nightline devoted 19 programs to the then-unfolding Whitewater real estate scandal. The MSM's stunning apathy on the Plame story did not reflect mainstream Americans, 79 percent of whom said the indictment of Libby was a matter of importance to the nation; a greater percentage than who said the same thing about 1998 charges that Clinton had lied under oath about his affair with Lewinsky.
Indeed, the contrast between the MSM's go-slow approach to the Valerie Plame leak investigation and the media's obsession for digging during the Clinton years was stunning. For instance, when it was alleged in 1998 that senior members of Clinton 's staff had privately contacted reporters to smear Monica Lewinksy's reputation for political gain, following news of her affair with the president, the news angle was covered with wild abandon. (The smear campaign was later proven to be non-existent.) A search of Nexis for articles and television reports between 1998 and 2000 regarding the Lewinsky saga that also contain mention of the White House and "smear campaign" retrieves approximately 850 matches. But a Nexis search for news accounts between September 2003 and October 2005 on the Plame investigation that mention the White House and a "smear campaign" [to discredit her husband Joseph Wilson] found just 150 matches.
Even after the Libby indictments were filed on Oct.28, Newsweek rushed to assure readers, in the second paragraph of its cover story, that Libby and Cheney likely never meant any harm by their Plame whispering campaign. Instead, relying on a hunch, the magazine reported, "It is much more likely they believed that they were somehow safeguarding the republic." [Emphasis added.] Elsewhere, the same article compared Libby to "to Roman centurions and Plato's Men of Silver." White House officials couldn't have said it better themselves.
Libby's soft-edge coverage was telegraphed in the weeks before. As legal trouble loomed for the VP's chief of staff in the fall, the MSM played nice as they introduced the Washington insider to readers and viewers with profile after profile detailing Libby's resume, from his college days right through his time in the White House. It was telling how many of those features forgot to mention the fact that during the 1990's Libby pocketed $2 million in fees working as the American attorney and chief advocate for Marc Rich, the disgraced billionaire fugitive. It was Libby who helped construct the sales pitch used to try to secure Rich a presidential pardon. The pardon was finally granted by President Clinton during his last days in office, which ignited one last free-wheeling Clinton press scandal. (Libby called Rich to congratulate him when he heard the good news of the pardon.) Prior to the indictments, it was the only real stain on Libby's impressive resume and cast some doubt of Libby's lofty, Man for All Seasons persona pushed in the press. And it certainly seemed worth at least a passing mention. But the MSM politely demurred.
On television, there was complete amnesia about Libby's work for Rich. During the week when the Libby indictments were announced and the story was treated as very big news (except, still, at the long form network news programs). The investigation generated constant chatter on the CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox, MSNBC, NPR, ABC, CBS, and NBC. In fact, the name Libby was mentioned more than 3,200 times according to TVEyes. The name of Marc Rich though, was mentioned just eight times.
In an Oct. 21, feature published online at Slate, titled "Who is Scooter Libby," the magazine painting a detailed portrait of Libby's professional life--"Lewis Libby is a graduate of Yale University and Columbia University School of Law"--but did not think the Rich/pardon angle needed to be included. Neither did the Knight Ridder News Service, which touched all the Libby bases in a 1,000-word profile and forgot to mention the Rich scandal. Ditto for a detailed, page 1 biography of Libby in the Baltimore Sun -- no Rich mention. Newsweek set aside seven full pages for its fawning Libby feature (he boasted "a heroic, romantic sense of his boss and his own role in history), but there was no mention of Rich. Meanwhile, on Oct. 23, the Washington Post published a gentle, page one Libby portrait, told exclusively through the eyes—and quotes--of his conservative, partisan friends, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz and Mary Matalin. There was not a discouraging word to be found in the 2,400-word valentine, in which readers learned Libby has a strong "sense of humor," was an "audacious novelist" who boasted "animated conviction," yet rarely lost sight of "the grandeur of his mission." (A reference to Rich's pardon was tucked into the 28th paragraph.) One week later the Post published another fawning Libby profile ("a self-effacing public servant, more interested in service than power ") which politely omitted any mention of Libby's $2 million payday courtesy of the billionaire fugitive.
Perhaps the most telling tidbit about Libby found in the Post profile though, was this: "He is diligent about returning reporters' calls." In other words, inside a White House that was notoriously close mouthed, reporters liked Libby and found him to be a useful source, which may have been another reason so many journalists seemed allergic to the idea of aggressively uncovering the two-year whodunit in which Libby had become entangled in.
LINK
Thursday, May 11, 2006
F.B.I.'s Focus on Public Corruption Includes 2,000 Investigations
May 11, 2006
By DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON, May 10 — A post-9/11 effort by the F.B.I. to concentrate on public corruption now includes more than 2,000 investigations under way, highlighted by the Jack Abramoff lobbying inquiry, the racketeering and fraud conviction of former Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, and the multipronged corruption probes after the guilty plea by Randy Cunningham, a former Republican House member from San Diego, bureau officials said.
As one of the Bush administration's least known anticrime efforts, the F.B.I. initiative has yielded an unexpectedly rich array of cases. The results suggest that wrongdoing by public officials at all levels of government is deeply rooted and widespread. Several of the highest profile cases in which the F.B.I. played an active role involve Republicans.
Bureau officials believe that the investment in corruption cases is easily worth the cost. In 2004 and 2005, more than 1,060 government employees were convicted of corrupt activities, including 177 federal officials, 158 state officials, 360 local officials and 365 police officers, according to F.B.I. statistics. The number of convictions rose 27 percent from 2004 to 2005.
In a telephone interview on Wednesday, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said the bureau was uniquely positioned to investigate corruption. Recalling his days as a prosecutor in Boston, he said: "Having prosecuted public corruption cases, you come to realize first of all that public corruption tears the fabric of a democratic society. You lose faith in public officials, it leads to cynicism, it leads to distrust in government."
The bureau's corruption effort has forced it to shift agents from other criminal programs. Violent street gangs, organized crime and large-scale narcotics trafficking organizations remain high priorities. But bureau officials like Chris Swecker, the top criminal enforcement official, acknowledged that the F.B.I. had reduced its investigation of single-victim fraud cases; smaller, localized drug rings; and nonviolent bank robberies. "We've had to make some very difficult choices," Mr. Swecker said.
Mr. Mueller is giving his first speech on the bureau's corruption effort on Thursday in San Diego, which Mr. Cunningham represented in Congress before he resigned and pleaded guilty to accepting more than $2 million for steering military contracts to friends and supporters.
In the interview, Mr. Mueller said the F.B.I. paid no attention to whether a public official was a Republican or a Democrat. "We have traditionally had the independence to investigate corruption regardless of political affiliation and no matter how powerful the official is," he said, adding: "Over the years it has not made any difference to the F.B.I. People from both parties have been investigated."
The F.B.I. is starting a Web site, reportcorruption.fbi.gov, through which people can send tips on corruption, although not anonymously, to be reviewed by agents at the bureau's headquarters.
Perhaps the most far-reaching of the cases is the one involving Mr. Abramoff, the former lobbyist at the center of a sweeping federal investigation into whether he improperly influenced decisions in Congress. He pleaded guilty to corruption related charges in Washington and Florida earlier this year.
In Illinois, Mr. Ryan was convicted last month of 18 counts of helping to award state business to supporters and misusing state resources for political benefit.
Not all high-profile cases involve Republicans. Last week, a Louisville businessman pleaded guilty in federal court in Virginia to bribing Representative William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana, with more than $400,000 in payments, stock in his high-tech company and a share of the profits to promote the firm's high-tech business ventures in Africa. Mr. Jefferson has denied ever accepting payments in return for government service.
Much of the public corruption caseload involves state and local officials. The F.B.I. has reach into government operations throughout the United States, with names like Lively Green, an investigation into corruption along the southwest border; Wrinkled Robe, a bribery inquiry that led to several arrests, including two state judges in Louisiana; Tennessee Waltz, a sting operation that led to the arrest of several Tennessee state lawmakers; and Midas Touch, an investigation of the New Mexico state treasurer's office.
The agency has long prosecuted public corruption, but in the 1980's and 1990's, street gangs, drugs and violent crime had a higher priority. "In the field offices, corruption wasn't always the highest priority," Mr. Swecker said. He said top officials in the bureau's 56 field offices largely set their own priorities.
"The director recognized the need for greater clarity and priorities," Mr. Swecker said. "I don't think anybody recognized the number and quality of cases we would generate."
In the restructuring of the F.B.I. after the Sept. 11 attacks, as hundreds of agents were shifted from criminal work to counterterrorism, bureau officials moved more than 200 agents to corruption as an area in which the F.B.I. had almost exclusive responsibility and in which Mr. Mueller and his aides believed the bureau could have the greatest impact.
"We looked at what we really needed to do that nobody else does," said James W. Burrus Jr., a senior official in the criminal division and an architect of the anticorruption program. "This is 100 percent ours."
Almost every one of the F.B.I.'s cases has been the subject of widespread news reports by local news organizations, and Time magazine has reported on the national scope of the effort. In some instances, for example in the cases of Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Abramoff, reporters appear to have been the first to uncover some aspects of possible wrongdoing. Agents regard such articles as tips for which they can claim success if they succeed in bringing a case.
LINK
By DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON, May 10 — A post-9/11 effort by the F.B.I. to concentrate on public corruption now includes more than 2,000 investigations under way, highlighted by the Jack Abramoff lobbying inquiry, the racketeering and fraud conviction of former Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, and the multipronged corruption probes after the guilty plea by Randy Cunningham, a former Republican House member from San Diego, bureau officials said.
As one of the Bush administration's least known anticrime efforts, the F.B.I. initiative has yielded an unexpectedly rich array of cases. The results suggest that wrongdoing by public officials at all levels of government is deeply rooted and widespread. Several of the highest profile cases in which the F.B.I. played an active role involve Republicans.
Bureau officials believe that the investment in corruption cases is easily worth the cost. In 2004 and 2005, more than 1,060 government employees were convicted of corrupt activities, including 177 federal officials, 158 state officials, 360 local officials and 365 police officers, according to F.B.I. statistics. The number of convictions rose 27 percent from 2004 to 2005.
In a telephone interview on Wednesday, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said the bureau was uniquely positioned to investigate corruption. Recalling his days as a prosecutor in Boston, he said: "Having prosecuted public corruption cases, you come to realize first of all that public corruption tears the fabric of a democratic society. You lose faith in public officials, it leads to cynicism, it leads to distrust in government."
The bureau's corruption effort has forced it to shift agents from other criminal programs. Violent street gangs, organized crime and large-scale narcotics trafficking organizations remain high priorities. But bureau officials like Chris Swecker, the top criminal enforcement official, acknowledged that the F.B.I. had reduced its investigation of single-victim fraud cases; smaller, localized drug rings; and nonviolent bank robberies. "We've had to make some very difficult choices," Mr. Swecker said.
Mr. Mueller is giving his first speech on the bureau's corruption effort on Thursday in San Diego, which Mr. Cunningham represented in Congress before he resigned and pleaded guilty to accepting more than $2 million for steering military contracts to friends and supporters.
In the interview, Mr. Mueller said the F.B.I. paid no attention to whether a public official was a Republican or a Democrat. "We have traditionally had the independence to investigate corruption regardless of political affiliation and no matter how powerful the official is," he said, adding: "Over the years it has not made any difference to the F.B.I. People from both parties have been investigated."
The F.B.I. is starting a Web site, reportcorruption.fbi.gov, through which people can send tips on corruption, although not anonymously, to be reviewed by agents at the bureau's headquarters.
Perhaps the most far-reaching of the cases is the one involving Mr. Abramoff, the former lobbyist at the center of a sweeping federal investigation into whether he improperly influenced decisions in Congress. He pleaded guilty to corruption related charges in Washington and Florida earlier this year.
In Illinois, Mr. Ryan was convicted last month of 18 counts of helping to award state business to supporters and misusing state resources for political benefit.
Not all high-profile cases involve Republicans. Last week, a Louisville businessman pleaded guilty in federal court in Virginia to bribing Representative William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana, with more than $400,000 in payments, stock in his high-tech company and a share of the profits to promote the firm's high-tech business ventures in Africa. Mr. Jefferson has denied ever accepting payments in return for government service.
Much of the public corruption caseload involves state and local officials. The F.B.I. has reach into government operations throughout the United States, with names like Lively Green, an investigation into corruption along the southwest border; Wrinkled Robe, a bribery inquiry that led to several arrests, including two state judges in Louisiana; Tennessee Waltz, a sting operation that led to the arrest of several Tennessee state lawmakers; and Midas Touch, an investigation of the New Mexico state treasurer's office.
The agency has long prosecuted public corruption, but in the 1980's and 1990's, street gangs, drugs and violent crime had a higher priority. "In the field offices, corruption wasn't always the highest priority," Mr. Swecker said. He said top officials in the bureau's 56 field offices largely set their own priorities.
"The director recognized the need for greater clarity and priorities," Mr. Swecker said. "I don't think anybody recognized the number and quality of cases we would generate."
In the restructuring of the F.B.I. after the Sept. 11 attacks, as hundreds of agents were shifted from criminal work to counterterrorism, bureau officials moved more than 200 agents to corruption as an area in which the F.B.I. had almost exclusive responsibility and in which Mr. Mueller and his aides believed the bureau could have the greatest impact.
"We looked at what we really needed to do that nobody else does," said James W. Burrus Jr., a senior official in the criminal division and an architect of the anticorruption program. "This is 100 percent ours."
Almost every one of the F.B.I.'s cases has been the subject of widespread news reports by local news organizations, and Time magazine has reported on the national scope of the effort. In some instances, for example in the cases of Mr. Cunningham and Mr. Abramoff, reporters appear to have been the first to uncover some aspects of possible wrongdoing. Agents regard such articles as tips for which they can claim success if they succeed in bringing a case.
LINK
Abramoff Visits in White House Logs Are Linked to Rove and a Budget Aide
By PHILIP SHENON
Published: May 11, 2006
WASHINGTON, May 10 — Newly disclosed White House visitor logs involving the lobbyist Jack Abramoff refer to a 2001 visit in which Mr. Abramoff talked with Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, about hiring two people for jobs at the Interior Department, a Bush administration official said Wednesday night.
The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the Justice Department's continuing investigation of Mr. Abramoff's illegal lobbying, said that neither person got a job at the Interior Department, an agency of special interest to Mr. Abramoff because of his multimillion lobbying work on behalf of Indian tribe gambling operations.
The administration official said there was nothing improper about the March 2001 meeting with Mr. Rove, whose ties to Mr. Abramoff have come under review by federal investigators in recent months.
The official said the visitor logs also referred to a 2004 meeting in which Mr. Abramoff talked with an official at the Office of Management and Budget to discuss his hopes of buying the Old Post Office building in Washington from the federal government.
The proposed purchase, which never occurred, is a focus of criminal charges brought against another former White House budget official, David F. Safavian. Mr. Safavian faces trial this month on charges of lying about his relationship to Mr. Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in January to charges of seeking to corrupt public officials.
The administration official's comments came several hours after the Secret Service made the visitor logs public in a settlement of a freedom-of-information lawsuit filed by a private legal group.
The release of the two pages of visitor logs appeared to raise as many questions as it answered, since White House spokesmen declined to explain why the logs did not refer to a number of other White House visits by Mr. Abramoff that they had previously acknowledged.
The two logs referred only to meetings in March 2001 and January 2004 but did not identify the White House officials that Mr. Abramoff met, nor the purpose of the visits.
A White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy, said she could offer no explanation of why the records released Wednesday did not reflect all of the visits by Mr. Abramoff that the White House had previously acknowledged. Asked if officials might have approved Mr. Abramoff's entry without requiring him to register at White House security posts, Ms. Healy declined comment. "I have nothing for you on that," she said.
Two other administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of rules that generally bar them from speaking to reporters, said the White House had decided that the settlement of the lawsuit did not require other, more complete visitor logs to be made public.
They said the more complete logs, known within the White House as Waves records, an acronym for the Workers Appointments and Visitors Entry System, would have identified the other visits by Mr. Abramoff.
The conservative group that sought the logs in the lawsuit, Judicial Watch, which has often championed open-government causes, suggested that it might return to court. The group's president, Tom Fitton, said the White House had decided to "cherry-pick the information."
LINK
Published: May 11, 2006
WASHINGTON, May 10 — Newly disclosed White House visitor logs involving the lobbyist Jack Abramoff refer to a 2001 visit in which Mr. Abramoff talked with Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser, about hiring two people for jobs at the Interior Department, a Bush administration official said Wednesday night.
The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the Justice Department's continuing investigation of Mr. Abramoff's illegal lobbying, said that neither person got a job at the Interior Department, an agency of special interest to Mr. Abramoff because of his multimillion lobbying work on behalf of Indian tribe gambling operations.
The administration official said there was nothing improper about the March 2001 meeting with Mr. Rove, whose ties to Mr. Abramoff have come under review by federal investigators in recent months.
The official said the visitor logs also referred to a 2004 meeting in which Mr. Abramoff talked with an official at the Office of Management and Budget to discuss his hopes of buying the Old Post Office building in Washington from the federal government.
The proposed purchase, which never occurred, is a focus of criminal charges brought against another former White House budget official, David F. Safavian. Mr. Safavian faces trial this month on charges of lying about his relationship to Mr. Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in January to charges of seeking to corrupt public officials.
The administration official's comments came several hours after the Secret Service made the visitor logs public in a settlement of a freedom-of-information lawsuit filed by a private legal group.
The release of the two pages of visitor logs appeared to raise as many questions as it answered, since White House spokesmen declined to explain why the logs did not refer to a number of other White House visits by Mr. Abramoff that they had previously acknowledged.
The two logs referred only to meetings in March 2001 and January 2004 but did not identify the White House officials that Mr. Abramoff met, nor the purpose of the visits.
A White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy, said she could offer no explanation of why the records released Wednesday did not reflect all of the visits by Mr. Abramoff that the White House had previously acknowledged. Asked if officials might have approved Mr. Abramoff's entry without requiring him to register at White House security posts, Ms. Healy declined comment. "I have nothing for you on that," she said.
Two other administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of rules that generally bar them from speaking to reporters, said the White House had decided that the settlement of the lawsuit did not require other, more complete visitor logs to be made public.
They said the more complete logs, known within the White House as Waves records, an acronym for the Workers Appointments and Visitors Entry System, would have identified the other visits by Mr. Abramoff.
The conservative group that sought the logs in the lawsuit, Judicial Watch, which has often championed open-government causes, suggested that it might return to court. The group's president, Tom Fitton, said the White House had decided to "cherry-pick the information."
LINK
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Bush nominated Abramoff associate same day Abramoff visited the White House in 2001
Ron Brynaert
Published: Wednesday May 10, 2006
Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff met with President George W. Bush the same day President Bush nominated one of Abramoff's former colleagues to be Assistant Secretary of Labor, RAW STORY has found.
President Bush announced his intent to nominate Patrick Pizzella, who worked with Abramoff at his former lawfirm Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, the same day Abramoff made a visit to the White House, according to Secret Service records released today.
On Mar. 6, 2001, Abramoff entered at 4:23 p.m. and left at 4:49 p.m., according to Cox News Service, which obtained the records from the government watchdog Judicial Watch today (Article).
A White House press release shows that Bush nominated Patrick Pizzella the very same day.
"The President intends to nominate Patrick Pizzella to be Assistant Secretary of Labor for Administration and Management," the release says. "He is presently the Acting Chief of Staff at the Office of Personnel Management and previously was a government affairs representative with the law firm of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds in Washington, D.C. From 1990 to 1995 he served as the Director of the Office of Administration at the Federal Housing Finance Board and he served in a variety of positions at the U.S. Department of Education, the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration during the Reagan and Bush administrations. He is a graduate of the University of South Carolina in Columbia."
Pizzella is the only Abramoff associate to remain in a senior Bush Administration post. David Safavian, who also worked with Abramoff, was arrested last year after allegations that he was obstructing the government's investigation of the Abramoff case. Safavian had been Bush's top procurement officer, overseeing $300 billion annually in federal spending. His lawyer has previously told RAW STORY he will be cleared of the charges.
LINK
Published: Wednesday May 10, 2006
Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff met with President George W. Bush the same day President Bush nominated one of Abramoff's former colleagues to be Assistant Secretary of Labor, RAW STORY has found.
President Bush announced his intent to nominate Patrick Pizzella, who worked with Abramoff at his former lawfirm Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, the same day Abramoff made a visit to the White House, according to Secret Service records released today.
On Mar. 6, 2001, Abramoff entered at 4:23 p.m. and left at 4:49 p.m., according to Cox News Service, which obtained the records from the government watchdog Judicial Watch today (Article).
A White House press release shows that Bush nominated Patrick Pizzella the very same day.
"The President intends to nominate Patrick Pizzella to be Assistant Secretary of Labor for Administration and Management," the release says. "He is presently the Acting Chief of Staff at the Office of Personnel Management and previously was a government affairs representative with the law firm of Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds in Washington, D.C. From 1990 to 1995 he served as the Director of the Office of Administration at the Federal Housing Finance Board and he served in a variety of positions at the U.S. Department of Education, the Small Business Administration and the General Services Administration during the Reagan and Bush administrations. He is a graduate of the University of South Carolina in Columbia."
Pizzella is the only Abramoff associate to remain in a senior Bush Administration post. David Safavian, who also worked with Abramoff, was arrested last year after allegations that he was obstructing the government's investigation of the Abramoff case. Safavian had been Bush's top procurement officer, overseeing $300 billion annually in federal spending. His lawyer has previously told RAW STORY he will be cleared of the charges.
LINK
White House records show just two visits by convicted lobbyist; Records omit Bush meeting
White House records show just two visits by convicted lobbyist; Records omit Bush meeting
John Byrne
Published: Wednesday May 10, 2006
Records omit visit to Old Executive Office Building on May 9, 2001
"Secret Service records released today under court order show that convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff made only two visits to the White House since President Bush took office in January 2001," Cox News Service is reporting (Article).
"On March 6, 2001, Abramoff entered at 4:23 p.m. and left at 4:49 p.m. On Jan. 20, 2004, he went in at 10:42 a.m. and left at 11:29 a.m. The records do not show who he saw or what the topic was," Cox reported. "Bush delivered a State of the Union address on Jan. 20, 2004."
The Secret Service records, however, do not square with what is already in the public record. The New York Times reported that Bush met with Abramoff and an Indian tribal leader in the Old White House Executive Office Building on May 9, 2001 -- which is not in the Secret Service logs (Article).
The Old Executive Office building is adjacent to the White House. It is possible that the Secret Service has not turned over records for buildings other than the White House proper. TIME has a photo of Bush with Abramoff here.
Andrew Blum, Abramoff's legal spokesman, said he had "no comment" about whether the records were accurate in response to a RAW STORY inquiry.
The records were acquired by Judicial Watch, a government watchdog group. A federal judge ordered the records released and the Secret Service said they would comply Apr. 25.
Abramoff, once Washington's top conservative lobbyist with annual accounts approaching $30 million, pled guilty to wire fraud in a Florida gambling boat deal and was recently sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison. He has also pled guilty to bribing members of Congress and their staffs; sentencing has not yet occurred in that case.
“At first glance, these documents seem incomplete when compared to other White House visitor logs obtained by Judicial Watch. We therefore have reason to believe there are additional details about Jack Abramoff’s visits to the White House that have not been disclosed,” Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president, told Cox. “However, now we know there are at least two visits by admitted felon Jack Abramoff that the White House must explain. What was Jack Abramoff doing at the White House? With whom did he meet? The public deserves to know answers to these questions.”
White House spokeswoman Erin Healy gave no further information about the visits to a Cox News Service inquiry. The erstwhile lobbyist raised upwards of $100,000 for President Bush's reelection campaign in 2004.
LINK
John Byrne
Published: Wednesday May 10, 2006
Records omit visit to Old Executive Office Building on May 9, 2001
"Secret Service records released today under court order show that convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff made only two visits to the White House since President Bush took office in January 2001," Cox News Service is reporting (Article).
"On March 6, 2001, Abramoff entered at 4:23 p.m. and left at 4:49 p.m. On Jan. 20, 2004, he went in at 10:42 a.m. and left at 11:29 a.m. The records do not show who he saw or what the topic was," Cox reported. "Bush delivered a State of the Union address on Jan. 20, 2004."
The Secret Service records, however, do not square with what is already in the public record. The New York Times reported that Bush met with Abramoff and an Indian tribal leader in the Old White House Executive Office Building on May 9, 2001 -- which is not in the Secret Service logs (Article).
The Old Executive Office building is adjacent to the White House. It is possible that the Secret Service has not turned over records for buildings other than the White House proper. TIME has a photo of Bush with Abramoff here.
Andrew Blum, Abramoff's legal spokesman, said he had "no comment" about whether the records were accurate in response to a RAW STORY inquiry.
The records were acquired by Judicial Watch, a government watchdog group. A federal judge ordered the records released and the Secret Service said they would comply Apr. 25.
Abramoff, once Washington's top conservative lobbyist with annual accounts approaching $30 million, pled guilty to wire fraud in a Florida gambling boat deal and was recently sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison. He has also pled guilty to bribing members of Congress and their staffs; sentencing has not yet occurred in that case.
“At first glance, these documents seem incomplete when compared to other White House visitor logs obtained by Judicial Watch. We therefore have reason to believe there are additional details about Jack Abramoff’s visits to the White House that have not been disclosed,” Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch president, told Cox. “However, now we know there are at least two visits by admitted felon Jack Abramoff that the White House must explain. What was Jack Abramoff doing at the White House? With whom did he meet? The public deserves to know answers to these questions.”
White House spokeswoman Erin Healy gave no further information about the visits to a Cox News Service inquiry. The erstwhile lobbyist raised upwards of $100,000 for President Bush's reelection campaign in 2004.
LINK
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Miller Attacks Libby in Latest Court Filing, Other Media Responses Now Filed
Bump and Update: All of the media Replies to Libby's Response to their motions to quash his subpoenas are now in. Here they are: Andrea Mitchell and NBC News; Matthew Cooper; and Time Magazine. Tim Russert is included in the NBC/Mitchell pleading.
******
Original Post 11:19 am
Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller filed this response (pdf) yesterday in her attempt to quash the supboena for her notes issued by Team Libby.
Mr. Libby further maintains he will use such information "to contend that, contrary to the allegations in the indictment, it was Ms. Miller who raised this topic in her discussions with Mr. Libby -if the topic was raised at all."
....He also makes the startlingly baseless claim that it may have been Ms. Miller who mentioned Ms. Plame to him.
How does this match up with her public account of her grand jury testimony?
I told Mr. Fitzgerald I believed that before this call, I might have called others about Mr. Wilson's wife. In my notebook I had written the words "Victoria Wilson" with a box around it, another apparent reference to Ms. Plame, who is also known as Valerie Wilson.
I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I was not sure whether Mr. Libby had used this name or whether I just made a mistake in writing it on my own. Another possibility, I said, is that I gave Mr. Libby the wrong name on purpose to see whether he would correct me and confirm her identity.
I also told the grand jury I thought it was odd that I had written "Wilson" because my memory is that I had heard her referred to only as Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether this suggested that Mr. Libby had given me the name Wilson. I told him I didn't know and didn't want to guess.
The gloves are off.
Update: Jane weighs in here and Tom Maguire here.
LINK
******
Original Post 11:19 am
Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller filed this response (pdf) yesterday in her attempt to quash the supboena for her notes issued by Team Libby.
Mr. Libby further maintains he will use such information "to contend that, contrary to the allegations in the indictment, it was Ms. Miller who raised this topic in her discussions with Mr. Libby -if the topic was raised at all."
....He also makes the startlingly baseless claim that it may have been Ms. Miller who mentioned Ms. Plame to him.
How does this match up with her public account of her grand jury testimony?
I told Mr. Fitzgerald I believed that before this call, I might have called others about Mr. Wilson's wife. In my notebook I had written the words "Victoria Wilson" with a box around it, another apparent reference to Ms. Plame, who is also known as Valerie Wilson.
I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I was not sure whether Mr. Libby had used this name or whether I just made a mistake in writing it on my own. Another possibility, I said, is that I gave Mr. Libby the wrong name on purpose to see whether he would correct me and confirm her identity.
I also told the grand jury I thought it was odd that I had written "Wilson" because my memory is that I had heard her referred to only as Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether this suggested that Mr. Libby had given me the name Wilson. I told him I didn't know and didn't want to guess.
The gloves are off.
Update: Jane weighs in here and Tom Maguire here.
LINK
Monday, May 08, 2006
Feeney/St. Andrews/Abramoff and Ney/HAVA/Abramoff Connections Still Flying Beneath the Radar
From Brads Blog:
...As Ney Chief of Staff Becomes Latest GOP Player to Cop a Plea Today...
Over the weekend, AP reported that email from Tom DeLay's (R-TX) office to Jack Abramoff's office reveals that the indicted former-majority leader was quite aware of who was paying for his $75,000 trip to St. Andrews, Scotland to play golf in 2000.
All of which makes it likely that Bob Ney (R-OH) was similarly aware of who was paying for the lobbyist funded vactation when he took a similar trip with Abramoff in 2002.
All of which makes it likely that Tom Feeney (R-FL), the third Republican Congressman to take the trip to St. Andrews, he in 2003, was also aware of who was paying for it.
Feeney has done a fine job of flying under the radar on this matter up until now. But with DeLay now down and out, and Ney's chief-of-staff, Neil Volz, copping a guilty plea today -- making him the fourth such criminal to implicate Ney in the vast Right Wing Conspiracy -- we'd think it only a matter of time before the media start noticing Feeney's conspiratorial involvement as well.
Along those lines, a couple of notable pieces from from the Volz plea (courtesy of Paul Kiel over at Muckraker)...
[W]e 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.
That point may be useful as investigators and/or media take a closer look at Feeney and his other questionable to trips, several of which are described here as part of CREW's "13 Most Corrupt" in Congress.
Secondly, Kiel reminds us about Ney's use of his pet bill, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, to help a few of his closest "friends":
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.
We've discussed how Ney used his authorship of HAVA and control of the House Administration Committee -- which he chaired until being forced to step down because of all of this -- in the past (almost one full year ago today, as a matter of fact).
More pointedly, however, we've reported on the roll Abramoff and Diebold played along with another former Ney chief-of-staff, David Distefano, in both passing HAVA in the first place, and ensuring it stayed intact as Diebold needed it to.
That story, in which funds were apparently funnelled through to Ney from both Diebold and Abramoff's firm Greenburg Traurig, has also been overlooked by the media in general. If they care to pick up that ball now, they can find a lot of still-uninvestigated open ends in our report right here.
Please feel free to let your media contacts know about both the Feeney issue and the Ney/HAVA/Abramoff issue, since both could use much more scrutiny by many more eyeballs.
LINK
...As Ney Chief of Staff Becomes Latest GOP Player to Cop a Plea Today...
Over the weekend, AP reported that email from Tom DeLay's (R-TX) office to Jack Abramoff's office reveals that the indicted former-majority leader was quite aware of who was paying for his $75,000 trip to St. Andrews, Scotland to play golf in 2000.
All of which makes it likely that Bob Ney (R-OH) was similarly aware of who was paying for the lobbyist funded vactation when he took a similar trip with Abramoff in 2002.
All of which makes it likely that Tom Feeney (R-FL), the third Republican Congressman to take the trip to St. Andrews, he in 2003, was also aware of who was paying for it.
Feeney has done a fine job of flying under the radar on this matter up until now. But with DeLay now down and out, and Ney's chief-of-staff, Neil Volz, copping a guilty plea today -- making him the fourth such criminal to implicate Ney in the vast Right Wing Conspiracy -- we'd think it only a matter of time before the media start noticing Feeney's conspiratorial involvement as well.
Along those lines, a couple of notable pieces from from the Volz plea (courtesy of Paul Kiel over at Muckraker)...
[W]e 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.
That point may be useful as investigators and/or media take a closer look at Feeney and his other questionable to trips, several of which are described here as part of CREW's "13 Most Corrupt" in Congress.
Secondly, Kiel reminds us about Ney's use of his pet bill, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, to help a few of his closest "friends":
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.
We've discussed how Ney used his authorship of HAVA and control of the House Administration Committee -- which he chaired until being forced to step down because of all of this -- in the past (almost one full year ago today, as a matter of fact).
More pointedly, however, we've reported on the roll Abramoff and Diebold played along with another former Ney chief-of-staff, David Distefano, in both passing HAVA in the first place, and ensuring it stayed intact as Diebold needed it to.
That story, in which funds were apparently funnelled through to Ney from both Diebold and Abramoff's firm Greenburg Traurig, has also been overlooked by the media in general. If they care to pick up that ball now, they can find a lot of still-uninvestigated open ends in our report right here.
Please feel free to let your media contacts know about both the Feeney issue and the Ney/HAVA/Abramoff issue, since both could use much more scrutiny by many more eyeballs.
LINK
Democratic National Committee to sue Secret Service for records in Abramoff lobbying scandal
John Byrne
Published: Monday May 8, 2006
The Democratic National Committee will file suit against the Secret Service today in an effort to obtain entry and exit logs for several prominent figures in the Abramoff lobbying scandal, RAW STORY has learned.
Jack A. Abramoff, once Washington’s richest lobbyist, fell victim to his own success after a federal investigation uncovered widespread fraud and influence peddling by him and his aides among senior Republican members of Congress. Democrats have tried, with limited success, to pin the scandal on Republicans as part of a 2006 election strategy.
Following the successful prosecution of the Secret Service for Abramoff’s files by the conservative legal watchdog group Judicial Watch, the DNC is suing to obtain records for Grover Norquist; a personal friend of Abramoff who arranged visits between Indian tribal leaders and President Bush; Patrick Pizella, an undersecretary of labor who worked on Abramoff’s lobbying team until he was appointed by President Bush; and Ralph Reed, an Abramoff friend and former Christian Coalition director who used his religious credentials to provide cover for Abramoff’s Indian gaming crusade.
They are also seeking entry and exit records for David Safavian, formerly President Bush’s chief procurement officer, who was arrested late last year for allegedly obstructing the Abramoff probe, and Michael Scanlon, Abramoff’s business partner, who recently pled guilty to bribing members of Congress and their aides.
The suit will be filed today in the United States District Court in Washington, D.C. Judicial Watch recently won their case to acquire Abramoff's records; it seems likely that the DNC will win this case as well.
The Secret Service has stalled requests for the records, which they must turn over by law under the Freedom of Information Act. RAW STORY has also filed Information Act requests with the Secret Service on Abramoff, Pizzella and Norquist without success.
The DNC first sought the records in January.
LINK
Published: Monday May 8, 2006
The Democratic National Committee will file suit against the Secret Service today in an effort to obtain entry and exit logs for several prominent figures in the Abramoff lobbying scandal, RAW STORY has learned.
Jack A. Abramoff, once Washington’s richest lobbyist, fell victim to his own success after a federal investigation uncovered widespread fraud and influence peddling by him and his aides among senior Republican members of Congress. Democrats have tried, with limited success, to pin the scandal on Republicans as part of a 2006 election strategy.
Following the successful prosecution of the Secret Service for Abramoff’s files by the conservative legal watchdog group Judicial Watch, the DNC is suing to obtain records for Grover Norquist; a personal friend of Abramoff who arranged visits between Indian tribal leaders and President Bush; Patrick Pizella, an undersecretary of labor who worked on Abramoff’s lobbying team until he was appointed by President Bush; and Ralph Reed, an Abramoff friend and former Christian Coalition director who used his religious credentials to provide cover for Abramoff’s Indian gaming crusade.
They are also seeking entry and exit records for David Safavian, formerly President Bush’s chief procurement officer, who was arrested late last year for allegedly obstructing the Abramoff probe, and Michael Scanlon, Abramoff’s business partner, who recently pled guilty to bribing members of Congress and their aides.
The suit will be filed today in the United States District Court in Washington, D.C. Judicial Watch recently won their case to acquire Abramoff's records; it seems likely that the DNC will win this case as well.
The Secret Service has stalled requests for the records, which they must turn over by law under the Freedom of Information Act. RAW STORY has also filed Information Act requests with the Secret Service on Abramoff, Pizzella and Norquist without success.
The DNC first sought the records in January.
LINK
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.
LINK
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.
LINK
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Government official testified that Rove stressed 'political importance' of countering CIA officer's husband
RAW STORY
Published: Sunday May 7, 2006
A former government official claims to have testified to the grand jury investigating the leaking of a CIA officer's identity that Karl Rove harped about the "political importance" of countering her husband to colleagues at the White House, according to a front page story set for Monday's Washington Post, RAW STORY has found.
Excerpts from the article written by Jim VandeHei:
#
Additionally, one former government official said he testified that Rove talked with White House colleagues about the political importance of defending the pre-war intelligence and countering Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. It was Wilson who publicly accused Bush of twisting intelligence about Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear material from Africa. The official refused to be named out of fear of angering Fitzgerald and the White House.
....
One former aide, who would discuss internal White House discussion only if his name was not used, said Rove was intimately involved in the WMD fight and discussed various components of the plan at senior staff meetings and one-on-one strategy conversations.
The aide said Rove's message was that ``if there are no WMDs and some blame us, it will not be a pleasant election year.'' The aide said Rove talked a lot about Wilson that week, but mostly about the fact he was a Democrat and needed to be rebutted.
Luskin, Rove's attorney, said Rove's focus was not on Wilson.
LINK
Published: Sunday May 7, 2006
A former government official claims to have testified to the grand jury investigating the leaking of a CIA officer's identity that Karl Rove harped about the "political importance" of countering her husband to colleagues at the White House, according to a front page story set for Monday's Washington Post, RAW STORY has found.
Excerpts from the article written by Jim VandeHei:
#
Additionally, one former government official said he testified that Rove talked with White House colleagues about the political importance of defending the pre-war intelligence and countering Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. It was Wilson who publicly accused Bush of twisting intelligence about Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear material from Africa. The official refused to be named out of fear of angering Fitzgerald and the White House.
....
One former aide, who would discuss internal White House discussion only if his name was not used, said Rove was intimately involved in the WMD fight and discussed various components of the plan at senior staff meetings and one-on-one strategy conversations.
The aide said Rove's message was that ``if there are no WMDs and some blame us, it will not be a pleasant election year.'' The aide said Rove talked a lot about Wilson that week, but mostly about the fact he was a Democrat and needed to be rebutted.
Luskin, Rove's attorney, said Rove's focus was not on Wilson.
LINK
Last Question Is Obstruction for Fitzgerald, Rove
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Sunday 07 April 2006
Hundreds of pages of emails and memos "discovered" by the White House in February and turned over to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald show that Karl Rove played a much larger role in the Valerie Plame Wilson leak case than he had previously disclosed to a grand jury and FBI investigators.
In February, TruthOut was the first to report the existence of the 250 pages of emails from Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the Office of the President that were written in mid-2003.
Some of the emails and memos were written by Rove, and are part of a growing body of evidence suggesting he lied to the grand jury and the FBI and may have obstructed justice during the course of the investigation. It was following their disclosure that Fitzgerald advised Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, several weeks ago that he intends to indict Rove for perjury and lying to investigators. The lingering question, sources close to the case said, is whether Fitzgerald will add obstruction of justice to the list of charges that he has already drafted against Rove.
News reports over the past two years about Rove's legal troubles have centered on the fact that Rove allegedly failed to disclose to Fitzgerald and the grand jury a conversation he had with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper in July 2003 about Plame Wilson and her husband, Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson, and an email Rove sent to then Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley about his conversation with Cooper.
While that issue continues to be a central focus in the case against Rove, what has not been previously reported is the fact that there are dozens of other memos and emails Rove sent to White House officials in June 2003, including former Chief of Staff Andrew Card, in which Rove suggests the White House launch a full scale public relations effort to attack Joseph Wilson for speaking out against the administration.
Rove did not disclose the communications when he was questioned by FBI investigators in 2003 and during his subsequent grand jury appearances, sources familiar with his testimony said. Some of those emails and memos recently discovered by the White House mention Valerie Plame Wilson's employment with the CIA.
According to sources close to the case, the emails also contained suggestions by Rove, and by senior officials in Vice President Dick Cheney's office and at the National Security Council, on how the White House should respond to what it believed were increasingly destructive comments Wilson had been making about the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence.
Fitzgerald disclosed in court documents in January that he discovered from witnesses in the case that some emails related to Wilson and his wife, written by senior aides in Cheney's office and sent to other officials at the National Security Council, had not been turned over to investigators by the White House.
"In an abundance of caution," Fitzgerald's January 23 letter to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's defense team states, "we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system."
Sources close to the case said that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales withheld numerous emails from Fitzgerald's probe, citing "executive privilege" and "national security" concerns. These sources said that as of Friday, May 5, there were still some emails that had not been turned over to Fitzgerald because they contain classified information in addition to references about the Wilsons.
While some news accounts over the past 10 days have reported that Rove's fifth appearance before the grand jury two weeks ago was to clear up testimony as to why he failed to disclose his conversation with Cooper and the email he sent to Hadley afterward, according to sources the bulk of Rove's testimony centered on why he had not disclosed the emails and memos and the larger role he played in the campaign to smear Wilson's reputation.
Rove's answer to those questions was succinct and consistent with answers he gave to similar questions during previous testimonies over the past two years: he said he forgot and at the time had turned his attention to more important White House matters such as Bush's re-election campaign, sources knowledgeable about his testimony said.
Fitzgerald started to build a perjury and obstruction of justice case against Rove and Libby, former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, in April 2004. Libby was indicted last year on those very charges.
Within two months of taking over the probe in December 2003, Fitzgerald and his team of investigators secured sworn testimony from 36 Bush administration officials, obtained thousands of pages of Plame Wilson related documents from the White House, and discovered the identity of the Bush administration official responsible for the leak.
The identity of that individual remains a closely guarded secret. And it's unknown whether the official was ever in any danger of being charged with a crime for blowing Plame Wilson's cover.
In order to be charged with violating the 1982 law that makes it a felony to disclose an undercover CIA operative's identity, the person responsible for unmasking the agent must be aware that the agent's status was classified. It's possible the official who leaked Plame Wilson's status to the media was unaware of that fact and testified truthfully about it.
But something Fitzgerald found buried in those emails, phone logs, calendars, and computer hard drives his staff obtained from the White House, as well as information contained in the hundreds of pages of transcripts of testimony from witnesses, forced the special counsel to shift gears in April 2004.
Fitzgerald started to focus on peripheral charges against Rove when it became clear that there were serious contradictions in the documents Fitzgerald obtained and sworn statements made by White House officials during the first three-months of the investigation by the FBI and the Justice Department.
The hard evidence Fitzgerald secured early on told a far different story about how Rove learned Plame Wilson was employed by the CIA than the narrative Rove gave during his two appearances before the grand jury in February 2004, sources close to the case said.
Rove admitted to FBI investigators and testified twice before a grand jury that he distributed damaging information about Plame Wilson and her husband to the Republican National Committee, outside political consultants and the media but did so only after Plame Wilson's name and employment status was published, according to attorneys who are familiar with Rove's testimony.
But the newly discovered emails and memos show that Rove was involved in a campaign to discredit Wilson and his wife more than a month before her name was published in a newspaper column.
Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, was traveling and would not be returning to Washington until Tuesday. His office said he would have no comment but may decide otherwise after he reads this story.
In addition to defending Rove, Luskin is a witness in the leak case. A week before Libby was indicted last October, Fitzgerald informed Luskin that Rove was a target of the probe - meaning there was enough evidence to link Rove to a crime - and that he would seek an indictment against him on perjury charges based on the fact that Rove did not disclose to the grand jury that he was a source for Time's Cooper and that he had sent an email to Hadley about his short conversation with Cooper.
Luskin saved Rove from an indictment two days before the grand jury returned an indictment against Libby. Luskin provided Fitzgerald with the back story as to how he helped his client recall his conversation with Cooper in July 2003, and in doing so Luskin became a witness in the case and gave a sworn deposition to Fitzgerald last year.
Luskin revealed to Fitzgerald that Viveca Novak - a reporter working for Time magazine who wrote several stories about the Plame Wilson case - inadvertently tipped him off in early 2004 that her colleague at the magazine, Matt Cooper, would be forced to testify that Rove was his source who told him about Plame Wilson's CIA status.
Novak - who is of no relation to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, the journalist who first published Plame Wilson's name and CIA status in a July 14, 2003, column - met Luskin in Washington, DC, in the summer of 2004, and over drinks, the two discussed Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame Wilson leak.
Luskin assured Novak that Rove learned Plame Wilson's name and CIA status after it was published in news accounts and that only then did he phone other journalists to draw their attention to it. But Novak told Luskin that everyone in the Time newsroom knew Rove was Cooper's source and that he would testify to that in an upcoming grand jury appearance, these sources said.
According to Luskin's account, after he met with Viveca Novak he contacted Rove and told him about his conversation with her. The two of them then began an exhaustive search through White House phone logs and emails for any evidence that proved that Rove had spoken with Cooper. Luskin said that during this search an email was found that Rove sent to Hadley immediately and it was subsequently turned over to Fitzgerald. Luskin must still be cleared by Fitzgerald for his role in the case as a witness.
There are conflicting stories about when Luskin and Novak met and when she tipped him off about Rove being Cooper's source. Novak testified that she told Luskin about Rove being Cooper's source in either January or May 2004 - guessing it was likely in May. Luskin testified that it was between October 2003 and February 2004.
Rove testified last week that he still couldn't recall speaking to Cooper.
LINK
t r u t h o u t | Report
Sunday 07 April 2006
Hundreds of pages of emails and memos "discovered" by the White House in February and turned over to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald show that Karl Rove played a much larger role in the Valerie Plame Wilson leak case than he had previously disclosed to a grand jury and FBI investigators.
In February, TruthOut was the first to report the existence of the 250 pages of emails from Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the Office of the President that were written in mid-2003.
Some of the emails and memos were written by Rove, and are part of a growing body of evidence suggesting he lied to the grand jury and the FBI and may have obstructed justice during the course of the investigation. It was following their disclosure that Fitzgerald advised Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, several weeks ago that he intends to indict Rove for perjury and lying to investigators. The lingering question, sources close to the case said, is whether Fitzgerald will add obstruction of justice to the list of charges that he has already drafted against Rove.
News reports over the past two years about Rove's legal troubles have centered on the fact that Rove allegedly failed to disclose to Fitzgerald and the grand jury a conversation he had with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper in July 2003 about Plame Wilson and her husband, Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson, and an email Rove sent to then Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley about his conversation with Cooper.
While that issue continues to be a central focus in the case against Rove, what has not been previously reported is the fact that there are dozens of other memos and emails Rove sent to White House officials in June 2003, including former Chief of Staff Andrew Card, in which Rove suggests the White House launch a full scale public relations effort to attack Joseph Wilson for speaking out against the administration.
Rove did not disclose the communications when he was questioned by FBI investigators in 2003 and during his subsequent grand jury appearances, sources familiar with his testimony said. Some of those emails and memos recently discovered by the White House mention Valerie Plame Wilson's employment with the CIA.
According to sources close to the case, the emails also contained suggestions by Rove, and by senior officials in Vice President Dick Cheney's office and at the National Security Council, on how the White House should respond to what it believed were increasingly destructive comments Wilson had been making about the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence.
Fitzgerald disclosed in court documents in January that he discovered from witnesses in the case that some emails related to Wilson and his wife, written by senior aides in Cheney's office and sent to other officials at the National Security Council, had not been turned over to investigators by the White House.
"In an abundance of caution," Fitzgerald's January 23 letter to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's defense team states, "we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system."
Sources close to the case said that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales withheld numerous emails from Fitzgerald's probe, citing "executive privilege" and "national security" concerns. These sources said that as of Friday, May 5, there were still some emails that had not been turned over to Fitzgerald because they contain classified information in addition to references about the Wilsons.
While some news accounts over the past 10 days have reported that Rove's fifth appearance before the grand jury two weeks ago was to clear up testimony as to why he failed to disclose his conversation with Cooper and the email he sent to Hadley afterward, according to sources the bulk of Rove's testimony centered on why he had not disclosed the emails and memos and the larger role he played in the campaign to smear Wilson's reputation.
Rove's answer to those questions was succinct and consistent with answers he gave to similar questions during previous testimonies over the past two years: he said he forgot and at the time had turned his attention to more important White House matters such as Bush's re-election campaign, sources knowledgeable about his testimony said.
Fitzgerald started to build a perjury and obstruction of justice case against Rove and Libby, former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, in April 2004. Libby was indicted last year on those very charges.
Within two months of taking over the probe in December 2003, Fitzgerald and his team of investigators secured sworn testimony from 36 Bush administration officials, obtained thousands of pages of Plame Wilson related documents from the White House, and discovered the identity of the Bush administration official responsible for the leak.
The identity of that individual remains a closely guarded secret. And it's unknown whether the official was ever in any danger of being charged with a crime for blowing Plame Wilson's cover.
In order to be charged with violating the 1982 law that makes it a felony to disclose an undercover CIA operative's identity, the person responsible for unmasking the agent must be aware that the agent's status was classified. It's possible the official who leaked Plame Wilson's status to the media was unaware of that fact and testified truthfully about it.
But something Fitzgerald found buried in those emails, phone logs, calendars, and computer hard drives his staff obtained from the White House, as well as information contained in the hundreds of pages of transcripts of testimony from witnesses, forced the special counsel to shift gears in April 2004.
Fitzgerald started to focus on peripheral charges against Rove when it became clear that there were serious contradictions in the documents Fitzgerald obtained and sworn statements made by White House officials during the first three-months of the investigation by the FBI and the Justice Department.
The hard evidence Fitzgerald secured early on told a far different story about how Rove learned Plame Wilson was employed by the CIA than the narrative Rove gave during his two appearances before the grand jury in February 2004, sources close to the case said.
Rove admitted to FBI investigators and testified twice before a grand jury that he distributed damaging information about Plame Wilson and her husband to the Republican National Committee, outside political consultants and the media but did so only after Plame Wilson's name and employment status was published, according to attorneys who are familiar with Rove's testimony.
But the newly discovered emails and memos show that Rove was involved in a campaign to discredit Wilson and his wife more than a month before her name was published in a newspaper column.
Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, was traveling and would not be returning to Washington until Tuesday. His office said he would have no comment but may decide otherwise after he reads this story.
In addition to defending Rove, Luskin is a witness in the leak case. A week before Libby was indicted last October, Fitzgerald informed Luskin that Rove was a target of the probe - meaning there was enough evidence to link Rove to a crime - and that he would seek an indictment against him on perjury charges based on the fact that Rove did not disclose to the grand jury that he was a source for Time's Cooper and that he had sent an email to Hadley about his short conversation with Cooper.
Luskin saved Rove from an indictment two days before the grand jury returned an indictment against Libby. Luskin provided Fitzgerald with the back story as to how he helped his client recall his conversation with Cooper in July 2003, and in doing so Luskin became a witness in the case and gave a sworn deposition to Fitzgerald last year.
Luskin revealed to Fitzgerald that Viveca Novak - a reporter working for Time magazine who wrote several stories about the Plame Wilson case - inadvertently tipped him off in early 2004 that her colleague at the magazine, Matt Cooper, would be forced to testify that Rove was his source who told him about Plame Wilson's CIA status.
Novak - who is of no relation to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, the journalist who first published Plame Wilson's name and CIA status in a July 14, 2003, column - met Luskin in Washington, DC, in the summer of 2004, and over drinks, the two discussed Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame Wilson leak.
Luskin assured Novak that Rove learned Plame Wilson's name and CIA status after it was published in news accounts and that only then did he phone other journalists to draw their attention to it. But Novak told Luskin that everyone in the Time newsroom knew Rove was Cooper's source and that he would testify to that in an upcoming grand jury appearance, these sources said.
According to Luskin's account, after he met with Viveca Novak he contacted Rove and told him about his conversation with her. The two of them then began an exhaustive search through White House phone logs and emails for any evidence that proved that Rove had spoken with Cooper. Luskin said that during this search an email was found that Rove sent to Hadley immediately and it was subsequently turned over to Fitzgerald. Luskin must still be cleared by Fitzgerald for his role in the case as a witness.
There are conflicting stories about when Luskin and Novak met and when she tipped him off about Rove being Cooper's source. Novak testified that she told Luskin about Rove being Cooper's source in either January or May 2004 - guessing it was likely in May. Luskin testified that it was between October 2003 and February 2004.
Rove testified last week that he still couldn't recall speaking to Cooper.
LINK
DeLay Office Knew Abramoff Arranged Trip
By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer
Sat May 6, 7:03 PM ET
Prosecutors have e-mails showing Rep. Tom DeLay's office knew lobbyist Jack Abramoff had arranged the financing for the GOP leader's controversial European golfing trip in 2000 and was concerned "if someone starts asking questions."
House ethics rules bar lawmakers from accepting free trips from lobbyists. DeLay, R-Texas, reported to Congress that a Republican advocacy group had paid for the spring 2000 trip that DeLay, his wife and top aides took to Scotland and England.
The e-mails obtained by The Associated Press show DeLay's staff asked Abramoff — not the advocacy group — to account for the costs that had to be legally disclosed on congressional travel forms. DeLay's office was worried the group being cited as paying the costs might not even know about them, the e-mails state.
Abramoff's team sought to low-ball the cost estimates and DeLay's office ultimately reported to Congress a total that was a few thousand dollars lower than the one the lobbyist provided, the documents show.
"We should give them the most minimal numbers for cost of the hotel (do not include golf), food and plays," Abramoff wrote two assistants at his Preston Gates lobbying firm in an e-mail from June 29, 2000. One of those assistants, Susan Ralston, now works for top White House adviser Karl Rove.
In a follow-up e-mail to Abramoff, Ralston reported she talked to DeLay's then-deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy, who suggested numbers that could be used as cost figures on the congressional travel report. Rudy had gone on the trip with his boss.
"Tony said: $6,800 for flights per person. $300 per night for hotel, $120 per day per person for meals, $500 per day for transportation," Ralston wrote Abramoff. Abramoff's credit card bill shows some costs were higher.
Federal prosecutors have secured the cooperation of Abramoff and Rudy, and are investigating whether DeLay filed false public reports to disguise the source and size of political donations, travel and other gifts he received from special interests. Several witnesses have been questioned in recent months about the Scotland trip e-mails.
DeLay's lawyer said Friday he believes the congressman's office asked Abramoff, instead of the GOP group, for the trip costs because the group's top executive was on maternity leave. He noted Abramoff served as director for the group listed as paying for the trip.
"The way I read this was that staff was trying to get it right," lawyer Richard Cullen said of the e-mails. "His (DeLay's) goal and his marching orders to his staff was to do it correctly. And I think staff tried to do it correctly."
An expert on federal disclosure reports said the e-mails raise serious questions about whether DeLay's office filed a false report.
"It clearly shows some members live in a dream world of high-class living and fictional accounting. DeLay's office was part of the public deception. It makes you wonder if there are more filings as fictional as this one is turning out to be," said Kent Cooper, the former chief of public disclosure for the Federal Election Commission.
Abramoff's lawyers declined comment.
It was first disclosed more than a year ago that Abramoff arranged for two clients to pick up most of the costs for the trip and to route the money to the National Center for Public Policy Research listed in the travel reports as the sponsor.
Abramoff's credit card bills show the lobbyist initially charged tens of thousands of dollars in air fare for DeLay's trip to his American Express card. Cullen said he believes the lobbyist consulted with an ethics expert before making the payments.
The trip, which included golf at the famous St. Andrew's professional course, and others like it have become symbols of Abramoff's largesse to lawmakers and a focal point of the criminal investigation into influence peddling on Capitol Hill.
DeLay has steadfastly maintained he believed that the center paid for the trip as he reported.
The e-mails show that when DeLay's office began preparing the required disclosure reports for the free trip, his aides asked Abramoff's lobbying firm for the cost figures instead of the GOP group.
"Our financial disclosure forms from the England/Scotland trip are due tomorrow afternoon. ... I would appreciate if you would send me your information," a DeLay aide wrote Abramoff's firm.
The e-mails show Abramoff's team provided then-DeLay chief of staff Susan Hirschmann a final cost figure of $75,600 for the weeklong European trip taken by DeLay; his wife, Christine; Hirschmann; Hirschmann's husband; and Rudy.
The e-mails stated DeLay's office could attribute the figures to "the final bookkeeping efforts" by the GOP group. Despite the figure from Abramoff, DeLay's report to Congress put the cost lower, at just over $70,000.
Ralston wrote she had a follow-up conversation with DeLay's office. Hirschmann wanted "a name" of someone at the GOP group who would attest to paying for the trip and was concerned whether the center's executive director, Amy Ridenour, knew about the costs.
"She (Hirschmann) just wants to make sure that if someone starts asking questions that Amy Ridenour knows about these s," Ralston wrote.
Hirschmann did not return a call to her office Friday and an e-mail message seeking comment.
The documents show Abramoff initially put the airfare for the DeLay trip on his American Express credit card and arranged for two clients — the Mississippi Choctaw tribe and eLottery — to route money to Ridenour's GOP policy group to cover the cost.
DeLay's lawyer said despite the discrepancy in cost figures and the evidence Abramoff initially paid for the airfare on his credit card, DeLay has no plans to change his travel report to Congress. "I think the report was made in good faith," the lawyer said.
LINK
Sat May 6, 7:03 PM ET
Prosecutors have e-mails showing Rep. Tom DeLay's office knew lobbyist Jack Abramoff had arranged the financing for the GOP leader's controversial European golfing trip in 2000 and was concerned "if someone starts asking questions."
House ethics rules bar lawmakers from accepting free trips from lobbyists. DeLay, R-Texas, reported to Congress that a Republican advocacy group had paid for the spring 2000 trip that DeLay, his wife and top aides took to Scotland and England.
The e-mails obtained by The Associated Press show DeLay's staff asked Abramoff — not the advocacy group — to account for the costs that had to be legally disclosed on congressional travel forms. DeLay's office was worried the group being cited as paying the costs might not even know about them, the e-mails state.
Abramoff's team sought to low-ball the cost estimates and DeLay's office ultimately reported to Congress a total that was a few thousand dollars lower than the one the lobbyist provided, the documents show.
"We should give them the most minimal numbers for cost of the hotel (do not include golf), food and plays," Abramoff wrote two assistants at his Preston Gates lobbying firm in an e-mail from June 29, 2000. One of those assistants, Susan Ralston, now works for top White House adviser Karl Rove.
In a follow-up e-mail to Abramoff, Ralston reported she talked to DeLay's then-deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy, who suggested numbers that could be used as cost figures on the congressional travel report. Rudy had gone on the trip with his boss.
"Tony said: $6,800 for flights per person. $300 per night for hotel, $120 per day per person for meals, $500 per day for transportation," Ralston wrote Abramoff. Abramoff's credit card bill shows some costs were higher.
Federal prosecutors have secured the cooperation of Abramoff and Rudy, and are investigating whether DeLay filed false public reports to disguise the source and size of political donations, travel and other gifts he received from special interests. Several witnesses have been questioned in recent months about the Scotland trip e-mails.
DeLay's lawyer said Friday he believes the congressman's office asked Abramoff, instead of the GOP group, for the trip costs because the group's top executive was on maternity leave. He noted Abramoff served as director for the group listed as paying for the trip.
"The way I read this was that staff was trying to get it right," lawyer Richard Cullen said of the e-mails. "His (DeLay's) goal and his marching orders to his staff was to do it correctly. And I think staff tried to do it correctly."
An expert on federal disclosure reports said the e-mails raise serious questions about whether DeLay's office filed a false report.
"It clearly shows some members live in a dream world of high-class living and fictional accounting. DeLay's office was part of the public deception. It makes you wonder if there are more filings as fictional as this one is turning out to be," said Kent Cooper, the former chief of public disclosure for the Federal Election Commission.
Abramoff's lawyers declined comment.
It was first disclosed more than a year ago that Abramoff arranged for two clients to pick up most of the costs for the trip and to route the money to the National Center for Public Policy Research listed in the travel reports as the sponsor.
Abramoff's credit card bills show the lobbyist initially charged tens of thousands of dollars in air fare for DeLay's trip to his American Express card. Cullen said he believes the lobbyist consulted with an ethics expert before making the payments.
The trip, which included golf at the famous St. Andrew's professional course, and others like it have become symbols of Abramoff's largesse to lawmakers and a focal point of the criminal investigation into influence peddling on Capitol Hill.
DeLay has steadfastly maintained he believed that the center paid for the trip as he reported.
The e-mails show that when DeLay's office began preparing the required disclosure reports for the free trip, his aides asked Abramoff's lobbying firm for the cost figures instead of the GOP group.
"Our financial disclosure forms from the England/Scotland trip are due tomorrow afternoon. ... I would appreciate if you would send me your information," a DeLay aide wrote Abramoff's firm.
The e-mails show Abramoff's team provided then-DeLay chief of staff Susan Hirschmann a final cost figure of $75,600 for the weeklong European trip taken by DeLay; his wife, Christine; Hirschmann; Hirschmann's husband; and Rudy.
The e-mails stated DeLay's office could attribute the figures to "the final bookkeeping efforts" by the GOP group. Despite the figure from Abramoff, DeLay's report to Congress put the cost lower, at just over $70,000.
Ralston wrote she had a follow-up conversation with DeLay's office. Hirschmann wanted "a name" of someone at the GOP group who would attest to paying for the trip and was concerned whether the center's executive director, Amy Ridenour, knew about the costs.
"She (Hirschmann) just wants to make sure that if someone starts asking questions that Amy Ridenour knows about these s," Ralston wrote.
Hirschmann did not return a call to her office Friday and an e-mail message seeking comment.
The documents show Abramoff initially put the airfare for the DeLay trip on his American Express credit card and arranged for two clients — the Mississippi Choctaw tribe and eLottery — to route money to Ridenour's GOP policy group to cover the cost.
DeLay's lawyer said despite the discrepancy in cost figures and the evidence Abramoff initially paid for the airfare on his credit card, DeLay has no plans to change his travel report to Congress. "I think the report was made in good faith," the lawyer said.
LINK
Friday, May 05, 2006
Countdown to Ecstasy
Obviously David Shuster’s report on Countdown was based on what happened today at the Libby trial. But if you read the accounts of Bloomberg, the AP and the Washington Post, you have to wonder — were they all at the same trial?
Olbermann, on Countdown:
And movement in one of the other major scandals’ investigations underway in the capital, Scooter Libby denied access to records documenting Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger, and a revelation that in July 2003 Libby was warned about the potential damage of outing Valerie Plame’s name and identity. The judge also signaling that the prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into Karl Rove might be nearing the close, noting that he expects resolution in the forseeable future of the problem of documents in the case that have been withheld because they touch on Rove, and because he is part of an ongoing investigation.
It’s rather remarkable that none of the three aforementioned news organizations felt this was worth noting. Libby spoke to Miller on June 23, July 8 and July 12, 2003; he also spoke with Cooper on the 12th. The CIA’s Bill Harlow has said he warned Robert Novak sometime around July 11 (or before) "in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson’s wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed." Was Scooter also warned around this time?
Other weirdness, from the AP:
Wells added that Libby was told several times to go forward but abruptly told to stop before he finally talked to the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and The New York Times’ Judith Miller.
Wells added that Libby was told several times to "go forward?" With what? Team Libby has stated that neither Bush nor Cheney told him to leak Plame’s identity, and the Washington Post claims Woodward testified that he never spoke to Libby about Plame so this must be in regard to the NIE or the other documents Libby was ordered to leak. But it looks like Bob Woodward was in fact a pit stop in the War on Wilson. Wouldn’t it be nice if Woodward actually wrote about what he knew of this story (as any journalist would) instead of running around calling Patrick Fitzgerald a "junkyard dog" without any acknowledgment that he was elbow deep in this shit? Cocktail weenies abound.
Crooks & Liars will have the video up soon and it includes a blockbuster about emails between Rove and another administration official regarding "Wilson’s wife." More soon.
Update I: Crooks & Liars now has the clip up, and it includes the following:
[A]ll the other attorney’s are talking about evidence and there was evidence mentioned today involving documents and memos of, from Karl Rove to another administration official about Valerie Wilson. If they’re talking about documents and memos as opposed to the Stephen Hadley email that Karl Rove wrote, in other words, if there are other emails or documents that would suggest that perhaps prosecutors have an even stronger case to suggest that Karl Rove didn’t have memory problems, he was willfully trying to avoid remembering certain things to the grand jury, but we’ll see pretty soon I think.
But the Hadley email didn’t include any information about Valerie Wilson. If documents were discussed regarding memos between Rove and another administration official that mention her, that’s news.
LINK
Olbermann, on Countdown:
And movement in one of the other major scandals’ investigations underway in the capital, Scooter Libby denied access to records documenting Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger, and a revelation that in July 2003 Libby was warned about the potential damage of outing Valerie Plame’s name and identity. The judge also signaling that the prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into Karl Rove might be nearing the close, noting that he expects resolution in the forseeable future of the problem of documents in the case that have been withheld because they touch on Rove, and because he is part of an ongoing investigation.
It’s rather remarkable that none of the three aforementioned news organizations felt this was worth noting. Libby spoke to Miller on June 23, July 8 and July 12, 2003; he also spoke with Cooper on the 12th. The CIA’s Bill Harlow has said he warned Robert Novak sometime around July 11 (or before) "in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson’s wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed." Was Scooter also warned around this time?
Other weirdness, from the AP:
Wells added that Libby was told several times to go forward but abruptly told to stop before he finally talked to the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and The New York Times’ Judith Miller.
Wells added that Libby was told several times to "go forward?" With what? Team Libby has stated that neither Bush nor Cheney told him to leak Plame’s identity, and the Washington Post claims Woodward testified that he never spoke to Libby about Plame so this must be in regard to the NIE or the other documents Libby was ordered to leak. But it looks like Bob Woodward was in fact a pit stop in the War on Wilson. Wouldn’t it be nice if Woodward actually wrote about what he knew of this story (as any journalist would) instead of running around calling Patrick Fitzgerald a "junkyard dog" without any acknowledgment that he was elbow deep in this shit? Cocktail weenies abound.
Crooks & Liars will have the video up soon and it includes a blockbuster about emails between Rove and another administration official regarding "Wilson’s wife." More soon.
Update I: Crooks & Liars now has the clip up, and it includes the following:
[A]ll the other attorney’s are talking about evidence and there was evidence mentioned today involving documents and memos of, from Karl Rove to another administration official about Valerie Wilson. If they’re talking about documents and memos as opposed to the Stephen Hadley email that Karl Rove wrote, in other words, if there are other emails or documents that would suggest that perhaps prosecutors have an even stronger case to suggest that Karl Rove didn’t have memory problems, he was willfully trying to avoid remembering certain things to the grand jury, but we’ll see pretty soon I think.
But the Hadley email didn’t include any information about Valerie Wilson. If documents were discussed regarding memos between Rove and another administration official that mention her, that’s news.
LINK
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Liberal group files Abramoff complaint in New Hampshire
RAW STORY
Published: Thursday May 4, 2006
A new liberal Senate advocacy group has filed a Federal Elections Commission criminal complaint against the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, who they allege may have illegally concealed the receipt and amount of a contribution from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians -- a native American client of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, RAW STORY has learned.
The Senate Majority Project says the Choctaw's contribution helped finance the Republicans’ efforts to stymie get out the vote phone lines by illegally "jamming" calls.
A lawyer for the Republican National Committee, who is representing those accused in the phone jamming case, recently revealed that the White House's role in the phone jamming was investigated by the Justice Department after it emerged that calls were placed by those involved to the White House on the day of the crime.
Republicans say calls to the White House weren't regarding phone-jamming. Bloomberg News reported that the RNC "said they only paid the legal bills of James Tobin, 45, who was convicted in December of conspiracy to commit telephone harassment because the Republican National Committee's previous leadership had agreed to do that."
``Democrats are trying to stir up crap,'' said Joe Gaylord, a Republican consultant, told Bloomberg.
Democrats say the Abramoff money "may be" illegal.
“Not only did the New Hampshire Republicans break the law to prevent people from voting, they may have done so with illegal money from Jack Abramoff’s Indian tribes,” Mike Gehrke, the group's director said. “In a move that would awe even Enron accountants, the New Hampshire Republicans took an illegal contribution and concealed it until after the election, after John Sununu had safely won his U.S. Senate seat.”
More follows from the Majority Project's press release.
#
On October 10th, the Choctaws wrote a check for $10,000 to the “New Hampshire Republican Party.” If it had been cashed on that day, it would have had to be disclosed before the election in the NHRSC’s final pre-election report to the FEC. However, the party did not cash the check until October 28th so it was not required to be disclosed until after the election. In fact, the contribution was ultimately not disclosed until December 5, 2002 -- well after the election.
On top of this fact, the NHRSC lied about the check amount on its reports. Mistakes are not uncommon, but this was no mere typo. The Choctaw check was $10,000 – double the $5,000 cap on contributions the party could legally accept from the tribe.
This donation has previously stood out because New Hampshire has no federally recognized tribes and no legal casino gambling. Furthermore, it was unusual for the Mississippi Choctaws to contribute to state parties; most of their federal-level contributions went directly to candidates. It was not unusual, however, for Abramoff and his associates to go to great lengths to use tribal money to aid his friends without it being disclosed. At the Senate Indian Affairs lobbying hearings, a Choctaw political official addressed the complicated means taken to run contributions through different PACs and non-profits, saying, "I'm sure there was some concern by some of the recipients of not being linked to a tribe or a gaming tribe," said [Choctaw official Nell] Rogers. [Gannett News Services, 6/24/2005]
“This scandal is quickly becoming a Who’s Who of Republican corruption,” continued Gehrke. “When the White House, the Governor of Mississippi, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Jack Abramoff are involved in a crime to stop people from voting, it says a lot about Republicans and winning at any cost.”
The complaint was filed with Lawrence Norton, the General Counsel of the Federal Elections Commission. The complaint and the check from the Choctaws are attached. They can also be found on the Senate Majority Project website.
Correction: The Senate Majority project says they have no ties to former Sen. Daschle beyond his signing a fundraising pitch. The story has been updated to reflect this.
LINK
Published: Thursday May 4, 2006
A new liberal Senate advocacy group has filed a Federal Elections Commission criminal complaint against the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, who they allege may have illegally concealed the receipt and amount of a contribution from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians -- a native American client of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, RAW STORY has learned.
The Senate Majority Project says the Choctaw's contribution helped finance the Republicans’ efforts to stymie get out the vote phone lines by illegally "jamming" calls.
A lawyer for the Republican National Committee, who is representing those accused in the phone jamming case, recently revealed that the White House's role in the phone jamming was investigated by the Justice Department after it emerged that calls were placed by those involved to the White House on the day of the crime.
Republicans say calls to the White House weren't regarding phone-jamming. Bloomberg News reported that the RNC "said they only paid the legal bills of James Tobin, 45, who was convicted in December of conspiracy to commit telephone harassment because the Republican National Committee's previous leadership had agreed to do that."
``Democrats are trying to stir up crap,'' said Joe Gaylord, a Republican consultant, told Bloomberg.
Democrats say the Abramoff money "may be" illegal.
“Not only did the New Hampshire Republicans break the law to prevent people from voting, they may have done so with illegal money from Jack Abramoff’s Indian tribes,” Mike Gehrke, the group's director said. “In a move that would awe even Enron accountants, the New Hampshire Republicans took an illegal contribution and concealed it until after the election, after John Sununu had safely won his U.S. Senate seat.”
More follows from the Majority Project's press release.
#
On October 10th, the Choctaws wrote a check for $10,000 to the “New Hampshire Republican Party.” If it had been cashed on that day, it would have had to be disclosed before the election in the NHRSC’s final pre-election report to the FEC. However, the party did not cash the check until October 28th so it was not required to be disclosed until after the election. In fact, the contribution was ultimately not disclosed until December 5, 2002 -- well after the election.
On top of this fact, the NHRSC lied about the check amount on its reports. Mistakes are not uncommon, but this was no mere typo. The Choctaw check was $10,000 – double the $5,000 cap on contributions the party could legally accept from the tribe.
This donation has previously stood out because New Hampshire has no federally recognized tribes and no legal casino gambling. Furthermore, it was unusual for the Mississippi Choctaws to contribute to state parties; most of their federal-level contributions went directly to candidates. It was not unusual, however, for Abramoff and his associates to go to great lengths to use tribal money to aid his friends without it being disclosed. At the Senate Indian Affairs lobbying hearings, a Choctaw political official addressed the complicated means taken to run contributions through different PACs and non-profits, saying, "I'm sure there was some concern by some of the recipients of not being linked to a tribe or a gaming tribe," said [Choctaw official Nell] Rogers. [Gannett News Services, 6/24/2005]
“This scandal is quickly becoming a Who’s Who of Republican corruption,” continued Gehrke. “When the White House, the Governor of Mississippi, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Jack Abramoff are involved in a crime to stop people from voting, it says a lot about Republicans and winning at any cost.”
The complaint was filed with Lawrence Norton, the General Counsel of the Federal Elections Commission. The complaint and the check from the Choctaws are attached. They can also be found on the Senate Majority Project website.
Correction: The Senate Majority project says they have no ties to former Sen. Daschle beyond his signing a fundraising pitch. The story has been updated to reflect this.
LINK
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