More details on the Lewis investigation.

Last week, Justin reported on Rep. Jerry Lewis's (R-CA) top aide at the House Appropriations Committee, Letitia White. The FBI's investigation of Lewis is reportedly revolving around Lewis' very close ties to lobbyist Bill Lowery, and Letitia White was one of a few aides who moved from Lewis's office to Lowery's. As Justin pointed out, she was flown to Italy for a 10-day all-expenses-paid trip by a defense contractor while with Lewis; a couple months thereafter, she left the Hill and registered to lobby for the company with Lowery's firm.

White was about as powerful as an aide can be on Capitol Hill. And investigators are interested. As we noted yesterday, the FBI recently subpoenaed San Bernadino County, a client of Lowery's firm. White was one of their lobbyists.

And The New York Times reports that "prosecutors are looking into" White's ties to Lewis and Lowery.

According to the Times, White had a real hold on Lewis. And she got all sorts of special attention from lobbyists while she worked with him, including Brent "Boom shaka laka" Wilkes and Lowery:

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That Shirlington Limousine story isn't over.

On Thursday, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee went on Hardball and gave it to the Homeland Security Department with both barrels -- first for cutting preparedness funding to New York, and then for making what he thinks may be a corrupt deal with the Shirlington Limo company.

"[T]here’s issues we’re looking into as to whether or not other companies were asked not to bid" on the $21 million contract, said Rep. Peter King (R-NY). The contract ultimately went to Shirlington, the troubled transportation company with strange ties to powerful Republicans.

I didn't catch the show, but in the transcript King -- declaring "I am at war with the Department of Homeland Security" -- sounds nearly apoplectic:

You had the orgies going on at the Watergate Hotel, with prostitutes, pimps, booze, card games, Duke Cunningham, lobbyists, CIA. The people were driven and the prostitutes were driven to the Watergate Hotel in limousines owned by a company which was run by a crook, which lost two of its previous contracts but was given a $21 million contract by the Department of Homeland Security to drive the top executives of the department around Washington. . . .

And there’s a lobbyist who was involved with the company who is also involved with Duke Cunningham and somehow mysteriously this company gets a $21 million contract to escort or to drive around the Department of Homeland Security’s top officials.

I'll grant DHS this much: It takes guts to cut funding to a Congressman's state when he's sitting on a pile of corruption allegations about you, and holds the power to subpoena your documents and testimony. (Thanks to CQ's Patrick Yoest for pointing this transcript out to me.)

I was down at the district court yesterday afternoon to watch federal prosecutors begin their cross-examination of David Safavian.

The gallery was packed with spectators. Justice Department interns, clerks for other judges in the courthouse, and lawyers squeezed onto the hard wooden benches to see how the prosecutors would treat Safavian. They got a good show.

There were audible snickers from the gallery -- I'm not making this up -- at some of Safavian's answers. Some of the former White House official's answers seemed simply too disingenuous to believe. For instance, when the prosecutor, Peter Zeidenberg, asked why Safavian thought Jack Abramoff had invited Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) on the weeklong luxury golf trip to Scotland and England, Safavian said, "I thought Mr. Ney was on the trip to meet with Scottish Parliament."

(Minutes earlier, the prosecutor and Safavian had this exchange: "You were [in Scotland] on Sunday. Did you play golf?" "Yes." "And you played Monday, correct?" "Yes." "And you played Tuesday, correct?" "Yes." "And Wednesday, correct?" "Yes." "And Thursday?" Safavian couldn't remember Thursday.)

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In a ruling today granting Scooter Libby limited access to classified information, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton gave him some bad news: This trial will be about lying. Of course, this is what you'd expect in the trial of a man who's accused of perjury and obstruction of justice. But Libby's lawyers had been trying to complicate matters by seeking documents on far-ranging topics, such as Joe Wilson's trip to Niger, his wife's affiliation with the CIA, etc. The judge will have none of it.

As he wrote:

...the only question the jury will be asked to resolve in this matter will be whether the defendant intentionally lied when he testified before the grand jury and spoke with FBI agents about statements he purportedly made to the three news reporters concerning Ms. Wilson’s employment. The prosecution of this action, therefore, involves a discrete cast of characters and events, and this Court will not permit it to become a forum for debating the accuracy of Ambassador Wilson’s statements, the propriety of the Iraq war or related matters leading up to the war, as those events are not the basis for the charged offenses. At best, these events have merely an abstract relationship to the charged offenses.

Not a good sign for Libby. You can read the order here.

More from the AP.

Via the Senate Majority Project, I see that Steve Forbes has used the pages of his magazine to denounce the rank injustice done to his friend James Tobin. To Forbes, Tobin's conviction was a conspiracy between shifty "perpetrators" and a usually sensible judge who for some reason "gave instructions to the jury that virtually begged for a guilty verdict against Tobin."

Justin, who's been at the Safavian trial all day, just called in to say that Safavian has just completed the direct examination and now is on to the hard part - the cross examination.

As expected, Safavian, the former chief of staff at the General Services Administration, testified that he did not regard his advice to Jack Abramoff on how to navigate the GSA's bureaucracy as Abramoff having "business" before the GSA. And so he thinks he did nothing wrong when he neglected to tell GSA ethics officials about it when he asked their advice on accepting a ride on Abramoff's charter flight to Scotland.

His lawyer, Barbara van Gelder, took the tone of a prosecutor in her questions. And Safavian said, "I had nothing to hide about Jack Abramoff." He also denied that there had been any quid pro quo. When asked if he'd wanted a gift from Abramoff, he replied, "I didn’t want to take advantage of someone who had been my friend."

Dressed in a dark suit, black tie and white shirt, Safavian seemed to be trying to win the jury's sympathy. When one of them sneezed, he said, "bless you."

Assuming the sympathic posture of someone who's been unfairly used by a friend, he's not trying to run from his closeness to Abramoff.

"Are you still friends?" van Gelder asked.

He paused. Then he said, "We haven’t spoken in a long time," and added:“I will always consider myself his friend.”

Here's more from the AP.

Cross examination will be a rougher ride.

The San Diego Union Tribune reports that GOP Congressional candidate Jim Galley has some skeletons in his closet:

Republican Jim Galley, who is running for Congress as a “pro-traditional family” candidate, was married to two women at the same time, defaulted on his child support payments and has been accused of abuse by one of his ex-wives....

Galley married his second wife, Beth, in 1982 when, unbeknownst to her, he was still married to his first wife, Terry. Beth and Galley divorced in 1990 after she sought a restraining order alleging abuse.

The child support was owed to his first wife....

And here's the explanation:

Galley said the contemporaneous marriages were a mistake because he thought his first divorce had been completed. He said the child support default was only for a few months and that the abuse allegation was made only to get him out of the house.

A restraining order to "get him out of the house?" I guess that's what you'd call passive aggressive.

And there's more.

Wednesday evening I received a lengthy reply from the Associated Press responding to my criticisms of John Solomon's initial piece on Harry Reid - I called Solomon, who passed me off to AP's corporate media relations. The reply, unsurprisingly, is a mix of flat-out falsehoods and off-point rebuttals. But it's important that we reply, so I've posted it with my point-by-point response below.

First, let me just say that I would have gotten to this Wednesday night if Solomon hadn't followed up with a still more misleading story. That kept me pretty occupied until yesterday afternoon. So you won't find the issues from Solomon's follow-up addressed below. The reply deals strictly with Solomon's initial piece.

OK. But before I get into the nitty-gritty, let's not lose sight of the big picture.

We went after Solomon's piece for a simple reason. At a time when Congressional corruption is arguably worse than it has ever been, leading to a spreading net of criminal investigations, Solomon used the most powerful organ in the land to attack Harry Reid for what is at very most a minor ethical transgression. Solomon did not allege a quid pro quo. He did not even allege that Reid violated ethics rules. What he argued was that Reid should have avoided accepting the seats in order to "avoid the appearance he was being influenced by gifts." And remember the supposed influence here was from a governmental body with interest - but no demonstrated financial interest - in pending legislation.

You don't have to look far in Congress to find examples of Members who could have exhibited more exemplary behavior. As the conservative-leaning Las Vegas Review Journal wrote in an editorial, "on a scandal scale of 1 to 10, these free fight nights rate about a 2." To puff that story up into an 8 is just bad journalism.

Solomon excluded key exculpatory details that weakened his case. As is clear from the AP's response below, it wasn't that he'd failed to gather these details - it was that he decided readers didn't need to be bothered with them.

And I should mention that in his follow-up piece, the distortions got much worse.

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Fingering Members of Congress is time-consuming work. And according to prosecutors, Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon just need a lot more time to give what they've got to give.

Scanlon and Abramoff were both scheduled to meet with the judge on June 6th, at which time they might have set a sentencing date. But prosecutors have asked to put that off until September 6th, because they "anticipate that Mr. Abramoff’s cooperation will continue for the foreseeable future," according to their motion yesterday.

What's more, Abramoff had been scheduled to hit the slammer on June 28th - that's when his sentence for the SunCruz fraud was to begin. But prosecutors have asked to put that off for another 90 days.

Oh, what's this?

Earlier today, David Safavian's lawyer Barbara van Gelder said that she expected to wrap up her case today. But now it appears that Safavian will be taking the stand himself:

Safavian told the judge Friday morning that he plans to take the stand later today. The judge cautioned him that he was not required to testify.

'For 10 months I've been catching grenades,' Safavian said. 'It's time to explain my side.'

So it all comes down to this. Justin is heading down to the courthouse now to see how Safavian does.

The Bush Administration has tried to use the state secrets privilege to stifle any lawsuits on the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program - but one judge, at least, will at least give the plaintiffs, the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights, a fair hearing.

The golf extravaganza will soon be at an end, and we're within a week of the first verdict in the Abramoff scandal.

The prosecution finished up with their case yesterday, and David Safavian's lawyer says she'll be wrapping up her case today - she's only calling a few witnesses. That means we'll be hearing closing arguments as early as next week.

And soon after, jurors will get to decide whether Safavian lied when he told ethics officials that Abramoff had no business with the General Services Administration, where Safavian was a top official, when Safavian jetted off to Scotland with him.

Brian Ross Crosses Mickey Mouse
Because of the report from ABC's investigative unit that House Speaker Dennis Hastert has attracted interest from federal investigators in the Abramoff matter, ABC's corporate parent is expecting headaches as it lobbies on unrelated legislation. In particular, Disney was pushing to roll back a provision in a recent tax bill that they project costs movie studios $180 million* over a decade. (WSJ)

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Earlier this month, the LA Times broke the story that House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) was under investigation by the FBI. The Times, and other papers that followed up on the story, cited anonymous law enforcement sources.

Well, now the AP has a San Bernadino county official on the record saying that the county has just received a subpoena from the FBI. The subpoena asks for records connected to Lewis and the lobbying firm of Bill Lowery, the former Congressman who is very, very close to Lewis. The county was a client of Lowery's. The investigation is said to be focusing on Lewis' ties to Lowery.

So there's no longer any room for doubt: Lewis is under investigation.

AP reporter John Solomon seems to think that the best defense is yet more bamboozlement.

Remember back to Solomon's initial version of his story on Harry Reid's acceptance of ringside boxing seats. Solomon claimed that Reid shouldn't have accepted them to avoid the appearance of impropriety. He didn't explicitly note that Reid actually voted against the guys who gave him the ringside seat credentials. But he didn't allege a quid pro quo either.

But now he seems to be saying that maybe it was a quid pro quo.

Check down in today's piece on Reid:

Reid told AP the free tickets did not influence his position, noting he voted for the legislation when it passed the Senate. However, Reid had forced a change in the bill that let the federal commission regulate the TV networks when they promoted fights. After the change, the House never approved the legislation.

For those of us who speak the English language these two sentences have a pretty straightforward meaning. Reid says the tickets didn't influence his position, "however", ergo, on the contrary, he pushed for this change about regulating TV networks. And "after the change" the House didn't approve the bill. Again, going by basic English, the pretty clear suggestion is that Reid's change had something to do with the bill not making it through the House.

In other words, Solomon is saying one of two things, or maybe both. Either the Commission -- the folks who gave Reid the credentials -- wanted this TV network change or maybe the TV network change was a poison pill, meant to torpedo the bill the House, a backdoor way of killing the legislation.

If there's some other way to understand Solomon's words, seriously, let us know.

I don't know much about boxing regulation. So I got on the phone to make some calls.

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The Federal Election Commission fined the campaign of Sen. Bill Frist $11,000 for failing to properly report a $1.4 million loan, Roll Call reports.

The FEC took action after the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint about the loan.

“We win,” CREW's founder, Melanie Sloan, told the paper.

Turns out that the "yellow badge" fiasco isn't the first time Amir Taheri has landed himself in a controversy over charges of sloppy reportage. (Put on your oven mitts, this stuff comes pre-heated.)

In the pages of the New Republic noted Iranian scholar Shaul Bakhash reviewed Taheri's 1989 book, "Nest of Spies: America's Journey to Disaster in Iran." He appears to not only have pored over Taheri's text, but also checked his sourcing. Guess what? He found problems. Oh, did he ever. [You can read the review here.]

Taheri "Repeatedly refers us to books where the information cited does not exist," Bakhash wrote. He found Taheri "capable of generalizations of breathtaking sweep and inaccuracy." "His interpretations of the documents are often egregiously inaccurate." Taheri "has trouble transcribing even the simplest information."

Now, this wasn't everyone's opinion. Christopher Hitchens called the book "finely written and highly intelligent." The Times of London said it was "well documented and well written." The Washington Post determined it was a "well-researched book. . . highly readable" and "indispensable."

But after reading the review by Bakhash -- a member of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and a professor at George Mason University -- it's hard to understand how Taheri won those plaudits.

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Oh my. John Solomon just keeps it comin'.

Via Greg Sargent, I see that John Solomon has rewritten the lead to his follow-up piece on Harry Reid. The distorting lead I pointed out yesterday has been replaced by a more narrative approach.

But he didn't stop there. And really, why should he? It's so much easier to cherry pick facts to boost your story than submit to the drudgery of countervailing details.

So here's another example of Solomon's bamboozlement. And, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to take you once again into the weedy specifics of this story. But it's worth it, believe me.

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It's strange to see a good name show up in a bad story. So we were quite surprised at the inexplicable -- or, at least, unexplained -- support that the respected Simon Wiesenthal Center gave to the bogus Iranian "yellow badge" story. As you certainly already know, the Wiesenthal Center works around the world to preserve the memory of the Holocaust, teach tolerance and raise warnings about discrimination, racism and genocide.

But that only makes the Center's role in this case more disappointing and difficult to explain.

The Center's leaders, Rabbis Abraham Cooper and Marvin Hier, confirmed the story to reporters apparently without checking it first. And now that the hoax has been revealed -- in fact, Iran has no plans to force its Jewish citizens to don identifying yellow badges -- the two men are not coming clean by explaining their role in helping to perpetuate it.

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Remember Karl Zinsmeister, the Washington-hating conservative editor picked by Bush to replace Claude "Sticky Fingers" Allen as new White House domestic policy adviser?

That's right, the one who selectively edited quotes and details in a published newspaper profile of himself, and posted his "improved" version on his magazine's Web site.

Now, the newspaper -- the Syracuse, N.Y. New Times alt-weekly -- says it is considering "legal action" against Zinsmeister. From Editor and Publisher:

[New Times editor Molly] English said the paper had not decided if it will, or can, take any legal action against Zinsmeister for altering its content and presenting it as the original version. But she said a lawyer is being consulted. "It is a tough one. I am not sure, frankly, what we could do," she said. "We haven't gotten to that point."

Before the paper's lawyers could get to Zinsmeister, however, the Washington Post editorial page fired off its own condemnation of the man's covert red-penning (which it has dubbed "Zinsmeistering"):

Almost anyone who's been the subject of a profile has wished he or she could take back some words, maybe tweak them a bit. No one else that we know of -- certainly no one who's about to become the president's chief adviser on domestic policy -- has had the gall to simply make those changes unilaterally. . . . Imagine how convenient it would be for the administration if it could do this with all reporting.

I spent a good part of yesterday tracking down and talking to some of the more respected Iran policy scholars here in the U.S., and their opinion was unanimous: Amir Taheri, most recently the author of the Iranian "Yellow Badge" fabrication, isn't taken seriously by those who study mideast politics. I even had a reporting colleague familiar with Taheri's oevre warn me off the guy.

We'll have more on this later today -- and it's good stuff, believe me -- but in general, he's simply not trusted. "This is a person who doesn't have any credibility," one scholar said. Of Taheri's recent piece alleging Iran was going to force religious minorities to wear color-coded badges, another established expert told me, "unfortunately, it's a pattern with him."

Because Taheri is still kicking around with some powerful friends (note his Monday visit to the White House), no one would be quoted.

But doesn't this make his White House visit all the more perplexing?

Ethics Watchdogs: Safavian Wasn't Honest
In the waning days of the prosecution's case against Jack Abramoff pal and former White House official David Safavian, government lawyers dispatched a short parade of two government lawyers and an investigator who said Safavian had lied to them about his dealings with disgraced superlobbyist Abramoff. Safavian faces five counts of lying to investigators. (AP)

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John Solomon's at it again.

Tonight, the AP released a new story on Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). It purports to show Reid admitting that Solomon was right all along, that Reid mistated senate ethics rules when he initially defended himself against Solomon's piece -- and now he's coming clean.

We were pretty surprised to see Reid admit that. And as it turns out, he didn't.

Solomon just arranges the lead in such a way as to mislead readers into thinking Reid said something he didn't.

Going through all the details involves slogging through some minutiae. But it's worthwhile because it's a good illustration of Solomon's MO in his reporting about Reid: write a hit piece and then distort a follow-up response into looking like the target admitted you're right (he did a similar thing after his earlier story on Reid's ties to Jack Abramoff was undermined).

Solomon's piece begins with the following lead:

Reversing course, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid's office acknowledged Wednesday night he misstated the ethics rules governing his acceptance of free boxing tickets and has decided to avoid taking such gifts in the future.

99% of readers - and the AP has many, many readers - will read that lead paragraph and interpret it to mean that Reid has admitted that he misstated Senate ethics rules when he said they allowed him to accept the tickets. He's chastened and he's agreed not to do it again.

But as Solomon writes in his next paragraph, Reid still thinks it was "entirely permissible" to have accepted the tickets. It's hard to square that with Reid's admission, though, right?

Let's jump down into the details.

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OK, so we've nailed this down. It would have been against state law for Harry Reid to have reimbursed the Nevada Athletic Commission for credentials.

Clearly, this is pretty far down in the weeds. But the AP actually got a pretty significant fact wrong. So let me run through the details.

Bob Arum, the boxing promoter who gave the credentials to Reid and Sen. John McCain, made that claim to The Las Vegas Review Journal. But I wanted to check up on that, so I called Keith Kizer, the Executive Director of the Nevada Athletic Commission. Kizer should know - he is a lawyer and former Chief Deputy Attorney General for the state of Nevada.

"It would be illegal," Kizer said, explaining that it fell under a state law prohibiting agencies or individuals for charging access to government property. The credentials provide access to the commission's area near the ring. "It would be like charging someone for access to a senator's office," Kizer added with no apparent sense of irony.

He went on to explain that credentials are given out to governmental officials and others in order to observe the commission's activity. Sometimes the credentials are provided in addition to tickets - sometimes officials sit in the commission's area.

Reid's office, meanwhile, confirmed that Reid received a credential, and not a ticket to the bout: "We know it for a fact that he had a credential.”

I have written to the AP asking whether they planned on issuing a correction and was promised a reply "this afternoon." In his piece, John Solomon referred to Reid having received (reimbursable) "tickets" to the fight.

This just in from the Toledo Blade:

Former GOP fund-raiser Tom Noe admitted today that he used politicians, former aides to Gov. Bob Taft, coworkers, and friends to illegally pour thousands of dollars into the effort to reelect President Bush.

Noe, in a hearing this afternoon in federal court in Toledo, entered a guilty plea to all three campaign finance charges he faced.

One more detail that the AP's John Solomon left out in his piece on Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

The crux of Solomon's story was that Reid acted wrongly by accepting free boxing tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission. In particular, Solomon focused on a title bout in September 2004 that Reid and McCain both attended. "Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., insisted on paying $1,400 for the tickets he shared with Reid for a 2004 championship fight," Solomon wrote.

But it turns out that it would have been illegal for Reid to reimburse the commission for the seats. That's because these weren't actually tickets - they were credentials with no face value given to V.I.P.'s. And according to the boxing promoter who awarded those credentials to Reid, it is illegal for the commission to accept payment for them. Despite that, McCain insisted on paying, and so the commission simply gave his check (written for a seemingly arbitrary amount) to a charity since it couldn't accept it.

What's more, that same promoter says that in other cases where Reid and McCain received tickets that could be reimbursed, Reid paid. That's a key fact which, if true, was left out of Solomon's article.

This from today's Las Vegas Review Journal, hardly a friendly paper to Reid:

[Marc Ratner, then executive director of the Nevada Athletic Commission] said Tuesday the seats Reid and McCain got weren't tickets available to the general public but "credentials" the commission gives only to public officials hoping to observe the commission's activity.

Skip Avansino, current chairman of the athletic commission and a commission member since 2002, said Reid, McCain and the athletic commissioners sat on folding chairs in a small, cramped area, not in the posh ringside seats for which pricey tickets are sold....

Boxing promoter Bob Arum said Reid and McCain also sat in ticketed seating at about three matches each but paid for their tickets "invariably." Arum said McCain and Reid's seats at the Hopkins-de la Hoya fight, on the other hand, were credentials from the commission, not tickets from Arum. But McCain, who brought his wife to the fight, sent Arum a check for the price of two ringside seats.

Arum said he didn't know what to do with the money.

"Those credentials cannot be sold," he said. "There's no price on them. (They are given to) governors, attorney generals, boxing commissioners of other states. ... It's illegal to accept money for a credential."

Arum said he couldn't accept McCain's money but McCain wouldn't take it back, so Arum donated it to Catholic Charities.

Two weeks ago, Amir Taheri published an op-ed in Canada's National Post about an Iranian law that forced Jews to wear a yellow stripe. The story, reminiscent of Nazi Germany, quickly provoked outrage, but was just as quickly revealed to be a total fabrication. It also ran in the New York Post.

Apparently this is just the sort of reliable advice that President Bush needs. Yesterday, Taheri had a face-to-face with the President as one of a small group of "experts" on Iraq that visited the White House.

According to Press Secretary Tony Snow, the experts were invited to the White House for their "honest opinions" on Iraq.

Yesterday, prosecutors in the David Safavian trial introduced pictures of the August 2002 golf junket to Scotland.

In this picture (here's a larger version), you can see from left to right, Neil Volz (former Ney aide, then Team Abramoff member, now felon), Ralph Reed, Paul Vinovich (Ney aide), Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) [a.k.a. Representative #1], William Heaton (Ney aide), David Safavian (on trial), Michael Williams (member of Team Abramoff), Alex Abramoff and Jack Abramoff. They're standing in front of the chartered plane that Abramoff booked to Scotland.

And here is a picture on the Scottish links. I believe this is Michael Williams, Volz, Safavian and Paul Vinovich:

Ah, good times, good times.

I spent yesterday afternoon watching David Safavian's lawyer cross-examine Neil Volz, a former Hill staffer and Team Abramoff lobbyist who is cooperating with Justice in the Abramoff scandal. Volz appeared to keep what credibility he has largely intact, although Safavian's lawyer did get him to admit that neither he nor his former employer, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), were very good golfers.

That morning, Volz had given some powerful testimony against Safavian, a White House official accused of lying to investigators about his relationship with Abramoff. Volz said Safavian was a "champion" for Abramoff's interests inside the Administration, who actively sought to help Abramoff and his associates find advantages within the government to benefit their clients.

In her opening statement, Safavian's lawyer Barbara Van Gelder assailed Volz for "climbing out of jail on David Safavian's back," so naturally I was expecting some exciting confrontations during her cross-examination of the guy. In particular, it seemed important to see how Volz -- the first government cooperator to testify in the Abramoff scandal -- would hold up under pressure. If Van Gelder found a way to destroy his credibility, it would make him (and possibly other government cooperators) less useful in future prosecutions, and theoretically make those cases harder for Justice to win.

Van Gelder had over four hours with Volz on the stand. At best, she managed to portray him as a self-interested schmuck who cared more about his own hide (and bank account) than the rule of law -- which, forgive me, isn't hard to do.

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Despite Abramoff Scandal, Burns Drops Modesty in Lobbyist Fundraising
In January, Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) moved a $1,000-a-plate "birthday party" from its original venue -- the offices of powerful lobbying firm Cassidy and Associates -- to the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters. It was just a temporary thing: Next month, Burns is planning a $500-a-person (and $1000-a-PAC) breakfast fundraiser at the offices of law/lobby firm Patton Boggs.

The event is hosted by three lobbyists who specialize in winning earmarks for their customers. "One of the hosts, Kevin O'Neill, has 'secured more than $100 million in federal appropriations for his clients,' according to the [firm's] Web site," AP reports.

Burns recently gave up $150,000 in campaign donations he had received from Abramoff, his partners and his clients. (AP)

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I didn't think it was possible, but the Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) case just got even uglier.

Today the Justice Department filed their response to Jefferson's lawyer's motion, where he argued that the search violated the "Speech or Debate" clause of the Constitution and demanded that the FBI return the seized documents. It is a lengthy, detailed dismantling of that argument - and TPMm readers interested in the Constitutional questions here should give it a read.

But beyond the legal argumentation, prosecutors supply the most detailed version of their case against him so far. And they explain why it is that they needed to raid his office - because they don't trust him to turn over evidence. According to an FBI agent's affidavit appended to the filing, Jefferson tried to "surreptitiously remove" documents while the FBI was searching his home in August of last year.

The agent provides a detailed narrative of catching Jefferson trying to hide the document. According to her, Jefferson, while sitting at his kitchen table during the search, hid the papers under a copy of the subpoena that agents had served on him. He then asked to move to the living room after it had been searched and placed the documents in a blue bag there which agents had already been through. She continues:

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Apparently all that talk of cooler heads on Capitol Hill considering the FBI's raid of Jefferson's Congressional office this weekend wasn't worth much.

Day One of Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner's "Reckless Justice" hearings was today. And after calling the decision to authorize the raids "profoundly disturbing," Sensenbrenner went on to explain his plans for the hearings:

Representative Sensenbrenner said that ... he would call Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and F.B.I. officials to testify. He also said the committee was considering drafting legislation that would specifically protect materials used in making laws.

Huh. The FBI and Justice Department are in talks with the House counsel over how to handle searches of Congressional offices, and meanwhile Sensenbrenner is talking about legislating his way through the problem. Don't you think that might irk some people at the FBI and DoJ?

Like I said last week, this fight is going to last for a while.

Last night, I pointed out the shortcomings of John Solomon's piece on Sen. Harry Reid (R-NV). Despite all that, I have to give Solomon a little credit for at least acknowledging in the second paragraph of his piece a key countervailing fact - that Reid was pushing and ultimately voted for a position counter to what the Nevada Athletic Commission wanted.

But this was apparently too even-handed for CNN.

Here's the second paragraph from the longer version of Solomon's story that ran off the wire:

Reid, D-Nev., took the free seats for Las Vegas fights between 2003 and 2005 as he was pressing legislation to increase government oversight of the sport, including the creation of a federal boxing commission that Nevada's agency feared might usurp its authority. (emphasis mine)

And here's the version of that paragraph as edited by CNN:

The Nevada senator took the free seats for Las Vegas fights between 2003 and 2005 from the Nevada Athletic Commission as he pressed legislation to increase federal oversight of boxing, including the creation of a government commission.

Do you see what's missing? The fact that Reid voted against the party he was allegedly influenced by apparently isn't worthy of mention.

Thanks to TPMm Reader G for the tip.

Late Update: Actually, this change came from the AP.

Well, we've finally gotten to the good part of the David Safavian trial. Rep. Bob Ney's (R-OH) former chief of staff Neil Volz took the stand this morning and testified about the help Safavian gave Team Abramoff while Safavian was chief of staff at the General Services Administration.

From the AP's rendering of this morning's testimony, Volz doesn't seem to be dishing anything we didn't already know from Abramoff's email correspondence with Safavian. We knew that Abramoff used Reps. Ney, Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Don Young (R-AK), and Steven LaTourette (R-OH) for favors. It's nice to get the extra detail that Team Abramoff called Safavian a "champion" because "he could get inside information." But it doesn't seem like Volz is a particularly dangerous witness for Safavian. The government's case still rests on those emails.

The real fireworks should come when Safavian's lawyer gets a chance to come at Volz. She went after him in a big way in her opening statements ("Neil Volz is crawling out of jail on David Safavian's back"). Justin will be there this afternoon to see how she does in pulling apart the government's case.

Under heightened public scrutiny, the House and Senate both passed versions of ethics reform legislation. Now, the competing bills move out from under the spotlight and into a quiet, closed room on Capitol Hill, where a handful of senators and congressmen will decide what language will actually make it into the final version of the bill.

You know who was pointedly not invited by leadership to participate in this vital process? Two senior senators involved in writing a good portion of the Senate bill, who had pushed for stronger measures. (They were rebuffed.) The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus opines:

Guess who's not coming to conference: The chairman, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), and ranking Democrat Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Conn.), of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which shares jurisdiction over the subject with the Senate Rules and Administration Committee.

Collins and Lieberman had backed much tougher lobbying reform -- especially an independent ethics enforcement office -- than the Senate ultimately passed. No wonder Senate leaders didn't want them anywhere near the conference.

You know who did make the cut? Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). "[I]f you think [Stevens] will be a champion of lobbying reform," Marcus cracks, "I've got a bridge to nowhere to sell you."

"This is the way the push for lobbying reform ends, not with a bang but a maneuver -- indecipherable to outsiders but quietly effective," concludes Marcus.

U.S. News and World Report says that some Republicans are fretting that Democrat Francine Busby may win the special Congressional election to replace now-imprisoned Randy "Duke" Cunningham -- and that may be a sign that House control will be going to the Democrats in November:

Staffers from the National Republican Congressional Committee are quietly telling GOP House members to prepare for a possible loss in the June 6 special election to fill the seat of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, now in prison for taking bribes. The Southern California district is heavily Republican, but some GOP insiders believe that Democrat Francine Busby will defeat former GOP Rep. Brian Bilbray and go on to win a full term in November. More alarming some worry that a Bilbray defeat could signal the GOP's loss of control of the House. The NRCC has already pumped $3.1 million into the race. "It is becoming more and more likely," says one GOP strategist, "that Bilbray will squeak out a victory." But another longtime Republican operative isn't so sure. "This is a district we should never lose," he says. "It's the stink of Cunningham, and the Bush problem."

One thing is for sure: If Busby wins, it will mean that despite what polls and pundits say, ethics are a serious concern for voters -- and incumbents sidestep the issue at their peril.

House Leaders Face Down Dissent in Ranks over Jefferson Raid
More signs of a spreading breakdown of order in the House: leaders are losing face, big time. House Republicans are publicly grumbling about Speaker Dennis Hastert's (IL) opposition to the FBI raid of cold-storage expert Rep. William Jefferson's (D-LA) office. He's made the party look like it's protecting its own rear, not the Constitution, some say. Meanwhile, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has reportedly been forced to swallow a squishy compromise with the Congressional Black Caucus -- she will refrain from calling on Jefferson to resign his Ways and Means committee seat, and the CBC will stop criticizing her for attacking one of its members. (Roll Call, Roll Call)

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If at first you don't succeed...

Back in February, the AP's John Solomon ran a lengthy piece detailing alleged contacts between Jack Abramoff's team at Greenberg Traurig and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). As Josh pointed out, although the article concentrated on the fact that Team Abramoff was lobbying Reid on behalf of sweatshop owners in the Northern Marianas, Solomon failed to note that Reid actually voted against the legislation Abramoff was pushing.

Well, Solomon has written a new piece purporting to illustrate still more of Reid's ethical improprieties. He's managed to actually make a weaker case than in his last story.

Here's the central allegation:

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid accepted free ringside tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission to three professional boxing matches while that state agency was trying to influence him on federal regulation of boxing.

That sounds pretty bad.

Only, there is an exception for gifts from governmental agencies (like the Nevada Athletic Commission) in the Senate ethics rules. So there is nothing untoward about Reid having accepted the free tickets.

But it would still seem pretty bad if Reid had accepted the tickets and then stumped shamelessly for the commission.

Only, he didn't. As was the case with Abramoff and the Marianas, Reid voted against the peddler's interest. As Solomon admits in the piece, Reid was advocating "the creation of a federal boxing commission that Nevada's agency feared might usurp its authority." Reid never changed his position. And this was a dramatically uncontroversial piece of legislation largely preoccupied with ensuring the safety of boxers by creating the United States Boxing Administration. It passed the Senate unanimously.

Now, Solomon puts all these facts in his piece. So he's not covering up a key piece of information like he did last time. He seems to realize that he doesn't have any real story. So Solomon argues that Reid, out of an abundance of caution, should have paid for the tickets to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

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In a piece filled with precious, precious details about Brent "Boom shaka laka" Wilkes (e.g. that he stayed in the King Kamehameha Suite at the Royal Hawaiian resort, that he's a former linebacker, and that he tends to break into show tunes) Newsweek reports that the FBI is investigating Wilkes' ties to Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Tom DeLay (R-TX):

According to published reports and congressional and law-enforcement sources who did not want to be identified discussing a sensitive investigation, the Feds are also reviewing Wilkes's ties to other powerful House leaders. Former GOP majority leader Tom DeLay, Armed Services Committee chairman Duncan Hunter and Appropriations Committee chairman Jerry Lewis all reportedly had dealings with Wilkes. None has been accused of any wrongdoing; a spokesman for Lewis said the congressman had not seen Wilkes for 10 years. Hunter's spokesman said his boss urged the Pentagon to ignore congressional pressure on contracting, and DeLay's lawyer had no immediate comment.

It's certainly no surprise that the feds would be looking at Hunter and DeLay (the investigation of Lewis has been widely reported). Hunter, as we noted before, sometimes tag-teamed with Duke Cunningham to make sure that Wilkes got his contracts. And DeLay was a frequent flier on Air Wilkes, taking his corporate jet at least three times.

For those trying to keep score at home, this would be the third ongoing investigation of DeLay: 1) He's being prosecuted in Texas for laundering corporate contributions, 2) Two of his former aides have pled guilty in the Abramoff investigation, and a third is in big trouble, and 3) His ties to Brent Wilkes are now occupying investigators. It looks like he has a very busy retirement ahead of him.

The San Diego Union-Tribune regales us this morning with details from poker parties hosted by alleged Cunningham briber Brent Wilkes in the Watergate hotel. CIA spooks puffing on Cuban cigars, a congressman handing out mini-pistols disguised as Montblanc pens, bottles of scotch and Mercedes limos -- it sounds like quite a scene.