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Feds Subpoena Records for Former DeLay Aide
John Bresnahan over at The Politico reports that a federal grand jury has subpoenaed House payroll records for Ed Buckham, formerly ex-Rep. Tom DeLay's (R-TX) chief of staff. Bresnahan notes that it's a clear indication that the feds are closing in on Buckham, who left DeLay to found the Alexander Strategy Group, the firm that made millions as the gateway to DeLay during the heady years when he ran the Hill.
Buckham, as DeLay's bag man, has long been considered the key to prosecutors building a case against DeLay as part of the Jack Abramoff investigation. The vise has been closing on him for quite some time. But Peter Stone reports in this month's National Journal that Buckham finally turned down a deal offered by prosecutors to plead guilty, and that "he expects to be indicted soon."
Buckham would be the third former DeLay aide to be targeted in the scandal. Two other ex-aides who went on to work with Abramoff, Michael Scanlon and Tony Rudy, have pleaded guilty.
Note: Here's our rundown on all of Buckham's many entanglements.
Update: Back in May, DeLay challenged the Justice Department to "Fish or cut bait. Do something," since they seemed to be taking their own sweet time questioning his associates about his relationship to Buckham and Abramoff. It appears that the Department has chosen the "fish" option.
Josh
Zachary
Any one else feel the need to reform country club prisons to look like all of the other prisons in America?
September 20, 2007 7:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
regular lurker-
Ronnie Earle Travus County D A maybe could send some of this DelAY possee to Huntsville at the state pen - Remember the TYCO bunch went to state prison .
Delay has many many sins to atone for- most particularly the illegal gerrymandering of our Tx Congressional districts - which of course allowed for the NMI's slave labor/forced prostitition / abuse to continue ,
Jesus might very well becoming for these DeLayites - and it would appear He is extremely pissed ...
September 20, 2007 8:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps we need to send them to Guantanamo. they seem to think it's okay for everyone else...
September 20, 2007 11:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Updated information regarding the "Abramoff Visa" (H-1B) that Ed Buckham helped to grow.
First, some history:
Former Rep. Joshua Eilberg created the H-1 Visa for colleges and universities in 1976. It allowed colleges and universities to import unlimited numbers of college professors and researchers, thereby destroying career prospects for almost all American citizen scientists and engineers who wanted a career in academia. The "Eilberg Amendment" was the informal title for this legislation.
In 1990, after lobbying from the private sector, and led by the National Science Foundation, the H-1B visa was created. It was supposed to be a "temporary program" to alleviate the fraudulent scientist and engineer shortages (that never materialized.) The Eilberg Amendment was cited as precedent for this legislation, which was supported by both Reps. Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Dick Armey (R-TX) When lawyer - lobbyist Jack Abramoff was first retained by Microsoft Corporation in 1995, there were employer concerns that there were going to be significant reforms (S. 1394.IS) proposed by Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) in this industry-designed program that would provide meaningful protections for U.S. citizen technical professionals, who were being displaced in large numbers by employer abuse of the H-1B visa program.
Microsoft worked very hard behind the scenes with key interventions by members of "Team Abramoff" including Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, and David Safavian to insure that Simpson's reforms were scuttled in 1996.
Team Abramoff was perhaps emboldened by this success and worked hard with Reps. DeLay and Armey, both holding Republican House leadership positions, to help procure for Microsoft and other "high tech" interests an expansion of the H-1B visa cap in 1998, and again in 2000. The effect of these "official acts" that occurred in exchange for "things of value" (over $20 million in Microsoft "lobbying expenditures and millions more in "campaign finance contributions" just between 1998 and 2000) was to destroy the career prospects for millions of experienced American citizen technical professionals.
Now, the update to the present:
With lobbyist Jack Abramoff's network beginning to collapse in 2005, Microsoft saw the benefit of retaining a Democratic lawyer-lobbyist who was an original member of "Team Abramoff" named Michael D. Smith. Michael now works for Cornerstone Government Affairs. See Mike's biography here:
http://www.cgagroup.com/staffContent.aspx?id=20 This biography neglects to mention that Mike was forced to leave Greenberg - Traurig in 2005 after an internal investigation uncovered that Mike had received kickbacks. The biography fails to mention that he was a member of "Team Abramoff." The biography doesn't even mention Greenberg - Traurig, instead referring instead to "a leading International law firm." I have documented some irregularities in lobbyist Smith's 2007 campaign finance disclosures. Furthermore, Cornerstone's lobbying disclosure forms for 2005 and 2006 mention that the work for client Microsoft Corporation included lobbying on "HB1 Visas" - perhaps to thwart research into Microsoft's recent lobbying. (The disclosure for the first half of 2007 identifies the visa correctly as "H-1B") Microsoft has expended hundreds of thousands of dollars on this lobbying effort since 2005, just with Cornerstone. Microsoft uses many other lobbying firms in addition to a large in-house lobbying staff.
Recall also that Bill Gates, III gave a two hour speech to the U.S. Senate HELP Committee on March 7, 2007 in which he demanded "infinite" H-1B visas. No rebuttals from harmed U.S. citizens were permitted. There are current attempts to sneak through an increase in H-1B visas after so-called "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" (including massive H-1B increases) was rejected in the U.S. Senate in May and again in June, 2007. Sen. John Cornyn's "SKIL Bill" is being proposed as an amendment to the FY 2008 Defense Appropriations Bill (H.R. 1585) as S.A. 2143 and a new H-1A visa is proposed by Sen. Cornyn as S.A. 2141.
Please contact the author at c0030180@airmail.net for more details.
September 21, 2007 12:41 AM | Reply | Permalink