David Safavian, the former White House official convicted for lying to ethics officials and Senate investigators about his ties to Jack Abramoff, is up for sentencing today.

Newsflash! He doesn't want to go to jail. He actually wept while he asked the judge for leniency.

The problem, as the judge sees it, is that despite being convicted, Safavian has refused to admit any responsibility for his actions. He's not really guilty. He was duped! Just like Bob Ney.

From the AP:

At sentencing Friday, Safavian apologized for giving the appearance of impropriety but said it was not fraudulent.

"Yes, Jack Abramoff was a friend but he wasn't my coconspirator and I wasn't his," Safavian said. "There was no conspiracy to defraud anyone, least of all the taxpayers."

Safavian didn't say, however, what U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman wanted to hear. Early in the hearing, Friedman told defense attorneys he was leaning toward a sentence of 15-21 months in prison and was not convinced Safavian had accepted responsibility for his crimes.

"Get up here and tell me, 'I agree I concealed. I agree I obstructed justice,'" Friedman said earlier in the day. "I don't believe he's done that."

Safavian's sentence should be in shortly.

Update: The sentence comes down: 18 months in prison.

Two sitting congressmen and an administration official close to President Bush were among those who recently penned letters in support of David Safavian, the former administration official recently convicted for lying to ethics officials and Senate investigators about his ties to Jack Abramoff.

As part of a defense motion seeking probation or house arrest instead of jail time, Safavian recently offered letters from family members, friends, and others testifying to his good character. Prosecutors have asked that Safavian be sentenced to three years in prison.

Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT), for whom Safavian worked as chief of staff, wrote that Safavian had worked "tirelessly" for him, according to an excerpt from the letter in the defense motion. Cannon's spokesperson declined to release the entirety of the letter, saying that the excerpt "speaks for itself."

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) offered a testimonial about Safavian's attention to the transfer of a lighthouse in Jones’ district during Safavian's term as chief of staff of the General Services Administration. Jones' spokeswoman said that Jones had been asked to write the account and offered the full text of the letter, which is after the jump.

Clay Johnson, the Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget, and also one of President George W. Bush's oldest friends, described Safavian as a "real professional" who “recused himself at even the slightest possibility of the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

Read more »

For those lawmakers who fear they may find themselves embroiled in scandal: take this page from Rep. Ralph Hall 's(R-TX) playbook -- and learn from it.

As we reported back in September, Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) took the floor of Congress in 1996 to question a 15 year-old girl's claim that she had been the victim of sex trafficking in the Northern Mariana Islands, a client of Jack Abramoff. "[S]he wanted to do nude dancing," Hall said. A lobbyist working with Abramoff helped Hall prepare his statement, and Abramoff had earlier paid for a trip by Hall to the islands.

Late last week, Hall's local paper revisited the issue and gave him another chance to respond. Despite having a decade to think up some decent explanations, Ralph stumbled badly.

On the question of whether Abramoff had paid for his trip:

“They [Preston Gates, Abramoff's law firm] may have paid for it [the trip]. I think I heard something about a technicality that one group couldn’t pay for something.”

On the question of whether Abramoff had prepared the statement for Hall, as indicated by billing records, which show Abramoff's associate conferring with Hall's legislative advisor on it:

“He [Abramoff's associated Lloyd Meeds] may have been the one to give me the information I put in there [Congressional Record] but I got it from my legislative advisor."

On the question of whether Abramoff actually wrote the very statement that Hall read on the floor of Congress:

"[My Democratic opponent] says Abramoff paid for my trip to the islands and wrote my report. He didn’t write my report, I wrote it out in my own hand. He might have charged them for it, because he was a crook. At that time he was well thought of."

Update: Somehow I missed this bit of the piece, where Hall explains how his trip to the Marianas helped fight the Cold War... in 1996:

Asked how the 1996 trip benefited the Texas Fourth Congressional District he represents, Hall said, “I think it benefits my constituents if you do anything that benefits the Peace Through Strength people, when you’re going out to bring information to them to help win the Cold War. That’s a benefit to them, to their strategic interests.”

I'm no great student of history, but the last time I checked, the Cold War ended in 1991.

Hall claims the trip was arranged by a group called the National Security Caucus Foundation, which in an earlier incarnation, was known as Peace Through Strength. However, Abramoff paid for the trip.

Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) has spent at least $91,500 in campaign funds on a white collar defense lawyer this year.

Last November, both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that Burns is on the short list for Abramoff investigators. Burns finally hired defense attorney Ralph Caccia of Powell Goldstein in April of this year. At the time, Burns' spokesman said that Caccia had been retained to "[help] review all the facts in this matter."

The review must be continuing, as Burns' recent FEC disclosure shows a $27,460 payment to Caccia's firm in September. Together with the $64,000 that Burns had paid out since April, that makes approximately $91,500 in fees.

Burns joins Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), his companion on the Justice Department's short list (which also includes former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) and soon-to-be-former Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH)), in both shelling out money for a top-flight defense lawyer and publicly proclaiming that he's not a target of the DoJ's probe. To see why Burns has got investigators so interested, see our reference section.

Recent polls show Burns trailing his Democratic challenger, Jon Tester.

How busy has Jack Abramoff been? U.S. News reports:

Jack Abramoff, the lobbying scandal figure, has become such a chatty rat that probe insiders say he's been given a desk to work at in the FBI. We're told he spends up to four hours a day detailing his shady business to agents eager to nail more congressmen in the scandal. And when cooperative witnesses spend that much time inside, they get a desk.

We noted last week that prosecutors have requested that Abramoff be placed in a prison close by so that their hours of fun can continue.

The prison door will close behind Jack Abramoff November 15th, starting an at least nine year sentence behind bars.

But that doesn't mean that prosecutors are done with him. Their sprawling investigation is far from over. So they've asked, and a judge has granted their motion, to have Abramoff placed in a Maryland prison. Prosecutors recommended a prison in Cumberland, Maryland, a medium security facility.

"Mr. Abramoff’s incarceration there will facilitate the government’s access to him and, therefore, the ongoing investigation," prosecutors wrote. Judge Paul C. Huck granted the motion Monday.

Abramoff's sentence relates to his forgery of a wire transfer related to his purchase of a Florida casino boat company. He has not yet been sentenced for charges relating to his corrupt lobbying practice.

New details are popping up about the Feds' interest in Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) for his ties to Jack Abramoff. But Doolittle is doing his best to put as bright a face on that as possible.

In a statement yesterday, Doolittle said that he "has no reason to believe that he is the target of an investigation."

As we've noted here before, the "not a target" line is a beloved one for mucked-up pols (Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) used it just last month). It is, of course, a relatively meaningless statement that sounds exonerating. Subjects of an investigation typically only receive target letters from prosecutors as a prelude to indictment. So Doolittle might as well be bragging that he hasn't been indicted yet.

We've known that Doolittle was under investigation for approximately two years. In 2004, investigators subpoenaed the records for his wife's consulting company (Julie Doolittle worked for Abramoff for two years). And since last November, Doolittle has consistently made the short list of lawmakers reportedly under investigation for their ties to Abramoff (as to why, see here).

Doolittle, via his spokeswoman, also revealed to The Sacramento Bee Monday that his lawyer has spoken several times with the Justice Department.

Read more »

More evidence of less-than-savory ties between Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) and Jack Abramoff.

As The Sacramento Bee noted this morning, a newly released email shows that in 2000, Abramoff and Doolittle spoke about getting Doolittle's wife, Julie, a job with a friend's nonprofit.

What the paper didn't reveal is that Abramoff had cut a similar deal for another favored contact: former DeLay aide Tony Rudy. Far from helping out a pal's wife, Abramoff appears to have used the arrangements to funnel bribes to powerful men, like DeLay and Rudy. And Doolittle.

The e-mail, released as part of a Senate report yesterday, provides even further grounds for suspicion of the relationship between Abramoff and Doolittle.

Read more »

In a statement issued after his guilty plea today, Bob Ney said that he was "[accepting] responsibility," but then explained, "I never acted to enrich myself or to get things I shouldn’t, but over time, I allowed myself get too comfortable with the way things have been done in Washington, D.C. for too long."

He also seemed to indicate that he wasn't a totally willing participant in Jack Abramoff's "schemes," saying "I accepted things I shouldn’t have with the result that Jack Abramoff used my name to advance his own secret schemes of fraud and theft in ways I could never have imagined."

Full statement below the jump...

Read more »

"Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) will formally resign from the House today, according to two House GOP sources," Roll Call reports.

The speculation has been that he would resign today, in a bid to convince the judge how very sorry he is for his crimes (or maybe he did get the hint). Justin will have more later from the scene at the courthouse.

A long-awaited report by the Senate Finance Committee accuses Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform and other Abramoff-linked non-profits with committing acts that are likely in violation of their tax-exempt status.

You can read the full report here. The document is 608 pages in total, but most of that is devoted to appendices and exhibits; the report itself is 55 pages long.

The report hits ATR for a number of activities unrelated to its nonprofit purpose. Like the Senate Indian Affairs Committee Report on Abramoff, the Senate Finance Committee criticized ATR for acting as a lobbying operation, advocating certain positions in exchange for donations from Abramoff clients.

The panel began investigating the use of charities by disgraced superlobbyist Jack Abramoff in spring 2005. A bipartisan effort, the report was released today by the Democrats alone. Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) did not release a statement on the report, nor did he announce hearings. A Grassley staffer told the Washington Post that the senator endorsed the report but said he "did not co-author the report because he had hoped it would have included Democratic groups that he believes also breached their tax status."

The panel found that ATR set up meetings for Abramoff clients with administration officials, such as President Bush and Karl Rove, in exchange for hefty contributions.

Read more »

Prosecutors have asked that David Safavian get three years in prison for lying to ethics and Senate investigators about his ties to Jack Abramoff.

Safavian, a former Bush administration appointee, was convicted back in June -- the first conviction in the Abramoff investigation. Safavian's lawyer has asked that he serve no prison time, arguing instead for home detention and/or community service. He's due to be sentenced October 27.

"Never" is a dangerous word for a Republican congressman when talking about Jack Abramoff.

Just ask Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), whose tight race may have gotten tighter over claims he'd "never" been worked by the disgraced superlobbyist.

"He never once lobbied me on anything," Pombo had said of Abramoff, practically inviting journalists to prove him wrong. "He never asked me to sign a letter, vote for or against a bill, introduce a bill, never once stepped foot in my office."

Sure enough, the AP combed through stacks of Abramoff's billing records for his client, the Northern Mariana Islands, and what did they discover: "more than two dozen. . . occasions from 1996 through 2001" where Abramoff's associates contacted Pombo's staff. And two direct contacts between Abramoff and Pombo, according to the service's report yesterday.

Just combing through our stack here, I can see an Abramoff associate billing the Marianas for... asking Pombo to sign a letter:

Pombo's line, of course, is that Abramoff is a liar and a cheat. And he certainly wouldn't be the first lawyer in history to get artistic with his billing. But it just goes to show -- "never" is a dangerous word, especially for someone like Pombo, who was so close to Tom DeLay, Abramoff's chief ally in Congress.

The Jack Abramoff scandal will be with us for at least a year to come, perhaps longer. Just two weeks ago, the House Government Reform Committee issued a blockbuster report revealing hundreds of contacts between Abramoff's team and the White House that resulted in the resignation last Friday of Karl Rove's assistant Susan Ralston.

The trail doesn't stop there, of course. So we sat down with National Journal's Peter Stone, the author of the forthcoming book Heist: Superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, His Republican Allies, And the Buying of Washington, who told us about how Abramoff operated, how the investigation is progressing, and what to expect next.

Read more »

Whoops. Karl Rove threw a party for dozens of White House staffers at Jack Abramoff's restaurant in January 2004, but was not charged, according to a new story in the National Journal (not available online).

The senior White House adviser only paid his tab at Abramoff's Signatures restaurant this May, the magazine reports -- after Abramoff had pled guilty to multiple felonies, including conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Approximately 50 operatives from Rove's office attended the party, for which Rove was ultimately charged $995. NJ's Peter Stone says they "munched on pricey hors d'oeuvres" as they listened to Rove give a pep talk. Rove made the reservation for the private room through Susan Ralston, his personal aide who resigned earlier today because of her ties to Abramoff.

Read more »

Yet another casualty in the Jack Abramoff scandal: Karl Rove's personal aide Susan Ralston has resigned over her ties to Abramoff, the AP reports.

Ralston was Abramoff's personal assistant until she moved over to Rove's office in 2001. Abramoff reportedly bragged to others that Ralston was his "implant" at the White House.

The White House announced an internal ethics investigation of Ralston after a Congressional report released last week showed extensive contacts between Ralston and Abramoff's lobbying team. Among other things, the report showed that Ralston had accepted thousands of dollars in gifts from Abramoff without compensating him. White House ethics rules prevent employees from accepting gifts worth more than $20.

White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino told the AP that Ralston resigned because "she did not want to be a distraction to the White House at such an important time and so we have accepted her resignation."