Some TPMm readers have written in to ask whether Grover Norquist limited his laundering activity to his buddies Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed. No, it turns out.

Norquist's group Americans for Tax Reform almost got in some serious trouble in 2002 for helping his Oregonian mini-me, Bill Sizemore of Oregon Taxpayers United.

Fearing political consequences, some of Sizemore's supporters wanted to keep their donations to his organization hush-hush. So they wrote checks to Norquist's ATR, who forwarded the money to Sizemore's group.

From The Oregonian, back in December of 2002:

Read more »

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) used his report to clobber Grover Norquist, and Norquist rebutted by calling McCain a "liar" and "delusional."

Oh, but this wasn't the first time. This is namecalling with a history -- dating at least back to the 2000 election, when Norquist mounted an ugly effort to defeat McCain.

McCain suddenly found himself with the upper hand in 2004, so the story goes, when the Abramoff investigation landed in his lap at the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, where he was chair. He had all sorts of damning emails at his disposal.

Back in March, Ryan Lizza wrote in The New Republic where things went from there...

Read more »

Norquist found the time to talk with conservative news site Newsmax.com about the recently-released McCain Report, which highlighted numerous transactions between Jack Abramoff, Norquist's nonprofit, and various recipients, including organizations tied to former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed.

"When McCain claims this was something other than an annual contribution, he is lying," Norquist said of the report, which found that ATR frequently pocketed several thousand dollars off the top of the "pass-through" amounts Abramoff funneled through ATR to needy Republican causes:

"McCain has misused his chairmanship of the Indian Affairs committee for two years to attack me and Ralph Reed because he thinks we beat him in South Carolina," Norquist said, referring to McCain's primary battle for the presidency. "He has told people I personally spent $12 million to defeat him in South Carolina. He is delusional[.]"

Ouch. As we've noted many times here, GOP uber-operative Grover Norquist used his nonprofit Americans for Tax Reform to wash money for Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed. Reed didn't want it known, remember, that he's "kind of like hypocritical." The story is memorably told by Abramoff's emails and various players' testimony to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

But not so fast, says Grover. He can explain why large amounts of casino money flowed into his organization and then flowed out to Christian groups. He was going to work for the casino, but then decided not to.

The Choctaw tribe of Mississippi donated $1.225 million to ATR, which then paid $1.15 million out (there were $75,000 in "management fees"). Why? ATR had just been indecisive.

Norquist said in The Post interview that the Choctaw tribe originally wanted ATR to direct the anti-lottery campaign, but his organization decided that it would be better to assist Christian groups already fighting the lottery.

"When we looked at it, we said they have an actual ongoing effort, we don't need to run it and [could instead] just contribute there, which was a continuation of the previous coalition," Norquist said. "They said fine."

Read more »

Courtesy of the AP's John Solomon:

Wanted: Face time with President Bush or top adviser Karl Rove. Suggested donation: $100,000. The middleman: lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Blunt e-mails that connect money and access in Washington show that prominent Republican activist Grover Norquist facilitated some administration contacts for Abramoff's clients while the lobbyist simultaneously solicited those clients for large donations to Norquist's tax-exempt group.

Come to think of it, this doesn't shine well for the administration, either. The selling of the White House, 2002?

It would appear that if there's a will, there's a way to prosecute Grover Norquist.

Yesterday, I noted former federal prosecutor Melanie Sloan's opinion that the Justice Department would not be pursuing Norquist on criminal charges for using his nonprofit, Americans for Tax Reform, as a money-washer and lobbying front. He's in real trouble with the IRS, she said, but it's not clear he committed a crime.

We at TPMm have some current and former federal prosecutors in our readership, who wrote in to disagree with Sloan's analysis.

Read more »

As I mentioned yesterday, Grover Norquist, the cold-blooded anti-tax bogeyman of the right, got hit hard yesterday in the McCain report.

It's now clear to anyone who's paid attention that Norquist used his non-profit, Americans for Tax Reform, as a money-washing business and lobbying firm. He took a "management fee" for laundering gaming money through to Ralph Reed. He has a long list of corporate donors that seek his help; and like any other lobbyist, his advocacy is for sale -- even to Democrats.

So what? Is there even a chance that he's going to jail?

Read more »

Here are some damning details about Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, courtesy of the newly-released McCain Report. It goes into great detail describing Ralph Reed's scheme to launder casino fees through non-profits.

Everybody who's been paying attention to the Abramoff scandal knows that when Ralph Reed, the boy-king of the Christian right, went to work for Jack Abramoff's Indian casino clients (his job was to roust grassroots Christians against competiting gambling platforms), he got skittish about accepting money from the tribes directly, since he's, you know, supposed to be anti-gambling. So he used non-profits, like Grover Norquist's American for Tax Reform, as pass-throughs to disguise the origin of the funds.

But it's refreshing to hear the Senate Indian Affairs Committee not mince words in their report. As part of their retelling of Abramoff's work for the Mississippi Choctaws, the report provides a damning blow-by-blow of how Reed came on this scheme, and how Norquist got started accepting a "management fee" (read: laundering fee) for his services.

The report is unequivocal. According to the Choctaw's planner, Nell Rogers, the tribe agreed to launder the money because "Ralph Reed did not want to be paid directly by a tribe with gaming interests." And at one point, she told the committee, Norquist became "nervous" about laundering the money. (But apparently not too nervous, because he kept on doing it.)

The section on Reed and Norquist begins on page 23 of the 373-page report, but I've reproduced the juiciest excerpt below (with my emphasis). In the beginning, Abramoff paid Reed through his lobbying firm Preston Gates (Abramoff even once suggested that the Choctaw pay Reed directly). But at some point, Reed became uncomfortable with that arrangement.

The report goes on (what follows is all excerpted):

Read more »