White House Records Show Visits by Abramoff Associates

Washington corruption figure Jack Abramoff had a number of associates with considerable White House access. Yahoo has the story by John Solomon and Sharon Theimer of the Associated Press:

Republican activists Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed landed more than 100 meetings inside the Bush White House, according to documents released Wednesday that provide the first official accounting of the access and influence the two presidential allies have enjoyed.

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Both Reed and Norquist became involved with Abramoff, the once high-power GOP lobbyist who has pleaded guilty to fraud and is now cooperating with prosecutors in an influence peddling investigation that has rocked Capitol Hill.

Norquist's group advocates lower taxes and less government and he built it into a major force in the Republican Party. Along the way he became friends with Abramoff and Rove.

E-mails obtained this summer by AP show Norquist facilitated several administration contacts for Abramoff's clients while the lobbyist simultaneously solicited those clients for large donations to Norquist's group. Americans for Tax Reform acknowledged Norquist helped Abramoff but said he did nothing improper.

Reed rose to prominence as an organizer of evangelical Christian groups, including the Christian Coalition, inside the Republican Party before moving into business ventures where he did work for Indian tribes at Abramoff's request.

The story mentions that the Bush Administration tried to block access to the records of who visits the White House. The fact that Bush and his staff have worked hard to avoid being associated with Abramoff since the scandal broke seems to speak volumes.

TPMMuckraker has many articles on Reed, Norquist and Abramoff; here's just a few paragraphs from their bio on Ralph Reed:

Ralph Reed, a lifelong conservative operative, is a longtime business and personal associate of Jack Abramoff. He lost the GOP primary for the Lt. Governor of Georgia on July 18 to the unknown State Senator Casey Cagle, who consistently attacked Reed for his lobbying activities with Abramoff.

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Abramoff's work for the tribes included rubbing out competition to their casinos from neighboring tribes or other forms of gambling. It was for this service that Abramoff hired Reed's Century Strategies. Reed's job, as Abramoff's partner Michael Scanlon put it, was to "bring out the wackos" - to create the appearance of overwhelming popular opposition to rival casinos or other forms of gaming.

In 1999, Abramoff hired Reed's firm to squash competition to the Mississippi Choctaw in neighboring Alabama. The Alabama legislature was considering two bills--one for a state lottery, the other to allow video poker at the state's dog-race tracks. Because Reed didn't want to receive money directly from gaming interests, Abramoff gave money to intermediaries, including Grover Norquist's group Americans For Tax Reform, who then wrote checks to Century Strategies, according to John McCain's Report to the Committee on Indian Affairs. The Choctaw paid Reed's firm $1.15 million. The lottery bill passed, but the other was stopped.

In 2001, he worked to kill competition to the Louisiana Coushatta's Grand Casino elsewhere in Louisiana and Texas by other tribes. Reed's firm was paid $4.2 million. Reed helped whip up public support for Texas Attorney General, now Senator, John Cornyn's effort to shut down the casinos of two Texas tribes.

Reed was paid by an online gambling company, an Abramoff client, to kill anti-gambling legislation.

In 2000, eLottery, Inc., which sold state lottery tickets online, hired Abramoff to fight the Internet Gambling and Prohibition Act. Abramoff worked to oppose it, by pushing the argument that the bill, because it made an exception for dog and horse racing, was soft on gambling.

Reed was paid $150,000 for work he did helping to pressure Republican Members of Congress who were thinking of supporting the bill. Another $150,000 went to a company run by a close associate, American Marketing, Inc.; Abramoff describes it in an email as "the company Ralph is using."

Reed laundered the money from Abramoff's clients to disguise his association with them.

For all three of the clients mentioned above, Reed's fees went through at least two intermediaries before reaching him. According to Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), who's heard unreleased Senate testimony, the laundering was Reed's idea.

In 1999 and 2000, Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform funneled the Mississippi Choctaw's money to two different Christian organizations in Alabama: the Alabama Christian Coalition ($850,000) and Citizens Against Legalized Lottery ($300,000). The organizations passed the money on to Reed's firm.

TPMMuckraker counts at least twenty Republicans being investigated in current corruption scandals. To date, there has been very little in the way of investigations of where all the money went for reconstruction in Iraq and where all the money has gone for Katrina. I suspect, if anyone ever gets around to it, another potential scandal will be the shell game that was played with money earmarked for homeland security.

Let's also not forget that during these years there have been several scandals on Wall Street thanks to lax rules put in place by Republicans during the 1990s, and of course an investigation of Enron was never launched in a timely manner during the energy price manipulations in late 2000 and early 2001. If Republicans remain in power in Congress, there can be no doubt that the corruption will not only continue but that much of it will remain uninvestigated.