Word: abramoff
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...difficult for DeLay to reclaim his job before it?s given to someone else. Many Congressional Republicans are unhappy with the temporary arrangement that has Missouri?s Roy Blunt acting as Majority Leader and are concerned about the ever-growing shadow of the Justice Department investigation of Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist connected to DeLay...
Lawmakers and their staffs took golfing trips that Abramoff arranged--and sometimes paid for--to Scotland and the Northern Mariana Islands. Abramoff's now defunct restaurant Signatures was host to more than 60 fund raisers for members of Congress and often neglected to send a bill. At the lobbyist's delicatessen Stacks, Abramoff even named a sandwich after Congressman Eric Cantor at a $500-a-plate fund raiser in January 2003. (Cantor later asked the deli to switch his namesake sandwich from tuna to roast beef on challah, "a deli special that exudes Jewish power," wrote the Jewish newspaper...
Does all that amount to influence peddling, or is it merely the way Washington works? Bribery is a difficult charge to prove. But the investigators' job of determining whether they have a case has been helped by the fact that Abramoff did almost all his most important communicating by e-mail--even with the assistants who sat outside his office, associates say. Also, authorities have collected the daily "wrap-ups" that Abramoff required his assistants to provide, including notations of nearly every phone call and appointment, every favor asked and every payment delivered. Scanlon's testimony, however, could be crucial...
However jumpy people in Washington are getting about the Abramoff investigation, it has yet to make much of an impact with voters beyond the Beltway. When Ney appeared at the Chamber of Commerce's legislative luncheon in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, last week, he got only one question about it, and that was from a reporter. Some in his district say the allegations against him prove nothing more than what they always knew about politicians. "Why are they nitpicking with him?" asks Edith Gibson, 77, who says she appreciates the work Ney has done for veterans. "Is every other person lily...
...also beginning to feel the heat. Over Thanksgiving weekend, Democrats began running an ad in Montana that attacks Republican Senator Conrad Burns, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that handles tribal matters. Fully 42% of the contributions to Burns' political-action committee from 2000 to 2002 came from Abramoff clients. In 2004 Burns steered a $3 million federal grant intended for tribal schools to a wealthy Abramoff client, the Saginaw Chippewas. The ad implores, "Tell Burns to work for Montana's working families, not indicted lobbyists." The National Republican Senatorial Committee immediately countered with a press release pointing out that...