Jack Abramoff

Texas GOP Lawmaker Shows How Not to Handle a Scandal

Paul Kiel | October 23, 2006, 1:40PM

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.

Ralph Hall

For Abramoff, Lawmaker Slandered Teen Sex Slave

Paul Kiel | September 25, 2006, 2:56PM

A Texas congressman is denying charges he slandered a foreign sex slave at the behest of Jack Abramoff. But documents obtained by TPMmuckraker contradict the Republican's claims.

In November of 1997, Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) publicly questioned the credibility of a teenage girl's claims that she'd been the victim of the sex trade in the Northern Mariana Islands. The statement, which Rep. Hall entered into the Congressional Record, was prepared by Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist for the islands.

"[S]he wanted to do nude dancing," Hall's statement said of the fifteen-year-old girl. She had earlier told federal investigators that she'd been forced to work for a local nightclub in a nightly live sex show. You can read the entirety of Hall's statement here.

Press accounts at the time detailed how the girl had been taken from her parents in the Phillippines, and forced to perform sex acts on stage and before video cameras at a Northern Marianas sex club. A 1998 Department of Labor report confirmed those reports.

Hall's challenger in Texas' 4th District, history professor Glenn Melancon, has made the episode a campaign issue. "When investigators discovered child prostitution and forced abortions on the Mariana Islands, Congressman Ralph Hall was paid for covering it up and publicly attacking one of the raped children," read postcards his campaign distributed to voters.

Hall has called the charge an "outright lie." His office did not respond to our request for comment on this story. But records show that Abramoff's staff contacted Hall's office fifteen times in the two months leading up to his statement in the Congressional Record.

Hall has also denied being paid for making the statement, but oddly enough has revealed that "[Tom] DeLay gave him money 10 years ago," according the to the district's local paper, The Herald Banner.

DeLay was Abramoff's closest ally in Congress with regard to the Marianas. But Federal Election Commission records do not show contributions to Hall from DeLay or his PAC during that period. The former Majority Leader was known for routing donations through third parties to hide their origin. Hall was a Democrat at the time he says he took DeLay's money -- he switched parties in 2004.

Hall visited the Marianas islands on an Abramoff-sponsored junket in 1997, according to emails. The CNMI government later reimbursed Abramoff. In this photograph from the Marianas Variety, Hall is shown during that trip:

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