Ney Admits to Lobbying Florida SenatorIt hasn’t gotten much attention, but Bob Ney’s guilty plea released today contained dirt on at least one other politician.
In the document, Ney fessed up to lobbying Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), then a Bush cabinet official, on behalf of an Abramoff client. The official’s department later acted favorably toward Abramoff’s client, according to news accounts.
Ney admitted to arranging a January, 2003 meeting with Mel Martinez, then Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, to “[advance] the interests of Abramoff’s Native American Indian Tribal clients.”
Ney told Martinez that his “number one priority as the newly installed Chairman of the Housing Subcommittee was Native American Indian Tribal housing,” according to the plea.
Martinez has said he can’t recall the meeting.
But here’s Martinez’s problem. He’s said that he never met wtih Abramoff while heading HUD; but clearly Ney was acting as a kind of lobbyist for Abramoff, who was trying to win HUD funds for his Indian clients.
And he got plenty. According to The Miami Herald, Abramoff’s client The Saginaw Chippewa, for whom Abramoff was working hard to win HUD money, was awarded about $4 million from 2002 to 2004.
Martinez was richly rewarded. Just two months after he left HUD in order to make a run for the Senate in early 2004, his campaign netted $250,000 from a fundraiser co-chaired by Abramoff.
So it seems that it’s time for another round of denials from Martinez that he gave Abramoff any special treatment.
Update: Thanks to the Public Campaign Action Fund’s David Donnelly for the tip.