Abramoff in with Dems? Former Colleagues Say No“Abramoff Reports to Prison; Officials Focus on Reid, Others,” was the headline of an ABC story yesterday reporting that Jack Abramoff, the convicted lobbyist, was dishing dirt on a handful of Democratic senators, Harry Reid (D-NV) in particular.
“Abramoff has offered testimony [to investigators] about his contacts with ‘six to eight seriously corrupt Democratic senators,’” ABC News reported, citing “sources close to the federal investigation.” One “source close to the investigation” told ABC that $30,000 in contributions to Reid from Abramoff’s tribal clients “were no accident and were in fact requested by Reid.”
The report was surprising, particularly given that in the thousands of pages of Abramoff’s emails, billing records and other documents released over the past two years, there’s little evidence that the Republican lobbyist or his team worked very hard to persuade Democratic lawmakers to support their clients, legally or illegally.
Curious to learn more, we called a number of Abramoff’s former colleagues from his heyday at the Greenberg Traurig lobby firm to see how the story struck them.
“Jack has not met eight Democrats in Washington,” one lobbyist told us.
He and others spoke on the condition of anonymity, because they did not want further publicity connecting them to Abramoff. Also, it should be noted that the lobbyists we spoke with continue to rely on access to lawmakers like Reid.
Ron Platt, a Democratic lobbyist who worked for a time with Abramoff on behalf of several clients and managed relations (such as they were) with Reid and other Democrats, said, “It’s beyond my belief that he would have trusted a Democratic senator or house member.”
“Jack Abramoff would never let any Democratic lobbyist, even on his team, manage one of his client matters,” said Platt.
Several expressed disbelief that Abramoff had the goods on Reid, as the ABC post suggested. “As far as I know, I can say that there is not a shred of truth to any allegation that anything Reid did that may have benefited a Greenberg client was done for anything of value given to Sen. Reid by Jack Abramoff or anyone else at Greenberg,” one former associate said, noting that the few actions Reid took which benefited Abramoff’s clients were consistent with positions the Nevada senator had long espoused.
The ABC story is of course not the first one to purport to show Abramoff’s access to Reid. The Associated Press ran what we found to be a deeply flawed story earlier this year detailing contacts with Reid’s staff by lobbyists at Greenberg Traurig — a story that ABC relied on for evidence of Abramoff’s access to Reid in their recent story.