Howard Dean Decimates Blitzer On Abramoff Contributions

January 9, 2006

--Dean Refutes the GOP Lie that Democrats Took Money from Abramoff

PastPeak, January 8, 2006

http://www.pastpeak.com/archives/2006/01/dean_crushes_bl.htm

Oh, baby. Stop what you're doing and watch this video clip. Howard Dean

leaves Wolf Blitzer sputtering:

http://www.canofun.com/blog/videos/2006/DeanAbramoffDemocrats.asx

UPDATE: Ok, here's my transcript, but watch the video if you can to get the

full effect.

BLITZER: Should Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff, who's now

pleaded guilty to bribery charges among other charges, a Republican

lobbyist in Washington -- should the Democrats who took money from him

give that money to charity or give it back?

DEAN: There are no Democrats who took money from Jack Abramoff. Not one.

Not one single Democrat. Every person named in this scandal is a

Republican, every person under investigation is a Republican, every

person indicted is a Republican. This is a Republican finance scandal.

There is no evidence that Jack Abramoff ever gave any Democrat any

money, and we've looked through all those FEC reports to make sure

that's true.

BLITZER: [stammering] But through various Abramoff-related organizations, and

outfits, a bunch of democrats did take money that presumably originated with

Jack Abramoff.

DEAN: That's not true either. There's no evidence for that either, there's no

evidence...

BLITZER: What about Senator, what about, what about, what about Senator Byron

Dorgan?

DEAN: Senator Byron Dorgan and some others took money from Indian tribes.

They're not agents of Jack Abramoff. There's no evidence that I've seen that

Jack Abramoff directed any contributions to Democrats. I

know the Republican National Committee would like to get the Democrats involved

in this. They're scared. They should be scared. They haven't told the truth,

and they have misled the American people, and now it

appears they're stealing from Indian tribes. The Democrats are not involved in

this.

BLITZER: [Long pause, apparently getting direction in his earpiece] [sigh]

Unfortunately, we, uh, Mr. Chairman, we've got to leave it right

there.

MORE BELOW

Lori I believe Joe Sandler an attorney at the Democratic party office in

washington might have more information to elp shed more light about Mr

Abramoff activities. I am sure Mr Abramoff has had some dealings with Mel

Sembler another crooked Republican Pioneer. Jeff Fisher a congressional

candidate in 2004 has info that the F.B,I, office has already. I hope to be in

touch with the Attorney Roy Black and help move this investigation along.

Why was Abramoff giving money to Diebold that counts 80% of our votes?

ElectionFraud2004/

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=284

revote2004

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/636288161

give congress your grade when you visit the polls section

Why was Abramoff giving money to Diebold that counts 80% of our votes?

<http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/pre-check-register.pdf>

http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/pre-check-register.pdf

<http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/pre-check-register.pdf>

http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/pre-check-register.pdf

Not mentioned anywhere is -- why was Abramoff giving money to Diebold that

counts 80% of our votes? For pictures/photocopies of check and information,

you can see here in pdf format. (adobe) Then incredibly researched and

detailed article is below.

******

<http://www.bbvdocs.org/moneytrail/greenberg.pdf>

http://www.bbvdocs.org/moneytrail/greenberg.pdf A one-month check from

Abramoff to Diebold. This was recovered from McKinney, Texas ---- remember

the dumpster where a couple of women found all kinds of stuff thrown into

the dumpster??????

Here is a corresponding payment, with the full words " Greenberg Traurig "

<http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/pre-check-register.pdf>

http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/pre-check-register.pdf

Printed from http://www.texasobserver.org

C Texas Democracy Foundation

<http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle_new.asp?ArticleID=13> Return to

siteNot mentioned anywhere is -- why was Abramoff giving money to Diebold

that counts 80% of our votes? For pictures/photocopies of check and

information, you can see here in pdf format. (adobe) Then incredibly

researched and detailed article is below.

******

<http://www.bbvdocs.org/moneytrail/greenberg.pdf>

http://www.bbvdocs.org/moneytrail/greenberg.pdf A one-month check from

Abramoff to Diebold. This was recovered from McKinney, Texas ---- remember

the dumpster where a couple of women found all kinds of stuff thrown into

the dumpster??????

Here is a corresponding payment, with the full words " Greenberg Traurig "

<http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/pre-check-register.pdf>

http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/pre-check-register.pdf

The Pimping of the Presidency

http://www.texasobserver.org/showForPrint_new.asp?ArticleID=13

Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist Billing Clients for Face Time with G.W.

Bush

BY LOU DUBOSE

our months after he took the oath of office in 2001, President George W.

Bush was the attraction, and the White House the venue, for a fundraiser

organized by the alleged perpetrator of the largest billing fraud in the

history of corporate lobbying. In May 2001, Jack Abramoff's lobbying client

book was worth $4.1 million in annual billing for the Greenberg Traurig law

firm. He was a friend of Bush advisor Karl Rove. He was a Bush " Pioneer, "

delivering at least $100,000 in bundled contributions to the 2000 campaign.

He had just concluded his work on the Bush Transition Team as an advisor to

the Department of the Interior. He had sent his personal assistant Susan

Ralston to the White House to work as Rove's personal assistant. He was a

close friend, advisor, and high-dollar fundraiser for the most powerful man

in Congress, Tom DeLay. Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush

Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for

a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two

clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5

million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife

operated.

Abramoff's White House guests were the chiefs of two of the six casino-rich

Indian tribes he and his partner Mike Scanlon ultimately billed $82 million

for services tribal leaders now claim were never performed or were

improperly performed. Together the six tribes would make $10 million in

political contributions, at Abramoff's direction, almost all of it to

Republican campaigns of his choosing. On started ATR in 1985. His power

increased exponentially in 1994, when Republicans took control of the House

of Representatives and he collaborated with then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay to

launch the " K Street Project " -a coordinated campaign to compel lobbyists to

contribute only to Republican candidates and ultimately to hire only

Republicans. Like Abramoff and Rove, Norquist considered George Bush's

victory over Al Gore the culmination of a project the three Washington

insiders started 30 years ago as national leaders of the College

Republicans.

Since the Post's Susan Schmidt broke the Jack Abramoff story, the media has

focused on the stunning $82 million Abramoff and Scanlon billed six tribes

for lobbying and public relations work. Far less attention has been paid to

the political contributions, by Abramoff's account $10 million, made by the

six tribes. That piece of the story involves the K Street Project, which

moves the money of corporate lobbyists and their clients into the accounts

of Republican candidates, PACs, and issue advocacy groups. May 9, 2001, when

he ushered the two tribal chiefs into the White House to meet the President,

The Washington Post story that would end his lobbying career and begin two

Senate Committee investigations was three years away. (When the Post story

broke in February 2004, however, Abramoff and Scanlon, a former Tom DeLay

press aide, were already targets of a U.S. Attorney's investigation in

Washington.)

Abramoff brought the Coushatta and Choctaw chiefs to Washington at the

request of Grover Norquist. Norquist is founder and director of Americans

for Tax Reform, the advocacy group committed to slashing taxes until the

federal government is so small you " can drown it in the bathtub. " Norquist

Republican Campaign Accounts

Abramoff advised tribal leaders that the contributions were the cost of

doing business in Washington, where he could protect them from other tribes

trying to open casinos to compete with those that already had them. He sent

orders for the checks to be cut, designating each recipient. On March 6,

2002, for example, Coushatta Tribal Council Chair Lovelin Poncho followed

Abramoff's orders and disbursed $336,300 in tribal funds, according to

tribal accounting ledgers obtained by the Observer.

The Coushattas, a southwest Louisiana tribe of 837 members, operate a casino

that does an estimated $300 million in annual business. The $32 million they

paid Abramoff and Scanlon makes the tribe the largest victim of the fraud

their lawyers now allege in a lawsuit filed by Texas plaintiff's firm

Provost Umphrey. The tribe also contributed what tribal council member David

Sickey said was probably " many millions " of dollars to political causes and

charities designated by Abramoff.

Since we first reported the White House ATR fundraiser and the $1 million

contribution to the Capital Athletic Foundation (

<http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?ArticleID=1800> see " K Street

Croupiers, " November 19, 2004), the Coushattas, speaking through Austin

attorneys at Hance, Scarborough, Wright, Ginsburg & Brusilow, and through

Louisiana political consultant Roy Fletcher, have vociferously denied that

tribal Chairman Poncho visited the White House after contributing $25,000 to

ATR. They also denied the $1 million contribution to Abramoff's foundation.

Recently the story has changed. Or at least the version told by the majority

that controls the council has begun to change. Two minority members of the

five-seat council have pointed to the pay-to-play meeting with President

Bush and the $1 million contribution to Abramoff as examples of the

council's financial mismanagement. One of the two members of the minority

faction, David Sickey, has regularly made himself available to the press.

Normally, press inquiries to the council majority are answered by Hance

Scarborough, by Roy Fletcher, or occasionally by sources close to the

council majority.

According to a source close to the tribal majority, Chairman Poncho recently

" revisited that issue " of his visit to the White House. He had previously

denied it because he thought he was responding to press inquiries that

implied he had a one-on-one meeting with Bush. He now recalls that he in

fact did go to the White House on May 9, 2001. Tribal attorney Kathryn

Fowler Van Hoof went with him, although she did not get into the meeting

with the President. That meeting lasted for about 15 minutes and was not a

one-on-one meeting. At the meeting, Bush made some general comments about

Indian policy but did not discuss Indian gaming. Abramoff was at the

meeting-for which he charged the Coushatta Tribe $25,000. The change in

Poncho's position is odd in light of the fact that he and his spokespersons

have maintained for more than a year that he did not meet with President

Bush in May 2001.

Norquist has not responded to inquiries about using the White House as a

fundraiser. It is, however, a regular ATR practice to invite state

legislators and tribal leaders who have supported ATR anti-tax initiatives

to the White House for a personal thank-you from the President. A source at

ATR said no money is ever accepted from participants in these events. The

$25,000 check from the Coushattas suggests that, at least in this instance,

Norquist's organization made an exception. The $75,000 collected from the

Mississippi Choctaws and two corporate sponsors mentioned in Abramoff's

e-mail suggests there were other exceptions. Norquist recently wrote to the

tribes who paid to attend White House meetings. His story regarding that

event is also evolving. The contributions, he told tribal leaders in letters

that went out in May, were in no way related to any White House event. That

doesn't square with the paper trail Abramoff and Norquist left behind, which

makes it evident that they were selling access to the President.

The Coushatta Tribal Council majority has also revised its response to

questions about the $1 million contribution, which critics in the tribe have

insisted was made to Abramoff's Capital Athletic Foundation in 2001. The

foundation funded Abramoff's Jewish prep school in Bethesda, MD, which

closed soon after his lobbying scheme unraveled. When the Observer inquired

in November 2004 about the $1 million contribution, we had obtained a copy

of the Capital Athletic Foundation's tax filing, but the contributor's name

was redacted. Following the lead of Lake Charles, Louisiana, American Press

reporter Shawn Martin, the Observer last week obtained an un-redacted copy.

The $1 million contribution, roughly 95 percent of what the foundation

raised in 2001, was attributed to the Coushatta Tribe. A source working with

the Coushatta Tribal Council majority said it now appears that the

contribution was made in response to a bill sent by Mike Scanlon.

Accountants working under the direction of Hance Scarborough found a

$1-million Greenberg Traurig invoice that Scanlon sent the tribe. Scanlon

routinely sent un-itemized bills for larger sums, which the tribe routinely

paid. But as he was not a Greenberg Traurig employee, he billed on his own

Capitol Campaign Strategies invoices. On the $1 million Greenberg Traurig

invoice Scanlon sent the tribe in 2001, the company name was misspelled.

There will need to be more accounting, probably by different accountants.

And perhaps by different legal representation, or at least under a different

understanding between the tribe and its lawyers. In the May 28 tribal

election on the Elton, LA reservation, a reform slate won a majority on the

five-member council. Sickey, who five days before the election maintained

that the $1 million contribution was made and that tribal chair Poncho

indeed went to the White House in 2001, predicted the new majority will hire

forensic accountants to determine where all the money went. (A week before

the election he was looking for a tribal newsletter in which, he said,

Poncho described his 2001 White House visit.) The shift on the council does

not bode well for its Austin law firm. Hance Scarborough had gone to tribal

court and successfully blocked a recall election that would have forced the

council majority to stand for election a year ago, and David Sickey was a

proponent of the recall. " Kent Hance doesn't represent me or [the other

minority dissident] Harold John, " said Sickey. " He represents Lovelin

Poncho. "

The White House press office has not responded to our questions about other

visits Jack Abramoff might have made to the White House or about Norquist using

the official residence of the President to raise funds for Americans for Tax

Reform. None of the political contributions Abramoff insisted the tribes make as

yet have been returned.

Lou Dubose is a former Observer editor and co-author of The Hammer: Tom

DeLay, God, Money and the Rise of the Republican Congress. This story was

written with support from the Fund for Constitutional Government.

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Howard Dean Decimates Blitzer On Abramoff Contributions

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