In the corridors of Washington, money doesn’t just talk, it practically shouts out loud. Consider the activities of embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The Associated Press reported this week that three dozen lawmakers received donations from Abramoff or his casino clients even as his activities were under scrutiny. Many lawmakers followed up the donation with letters urging Interior Secretary Gale Norton to reject a casino that would have been harmful to Abramoff’s clients.
Typically, the lawmakers said the timing of donations was a coincidence and that they wrote letters because they opposed the expansion of tribal gambling. A spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who received more than $100,000 in donations from 2001 to 2004, told AP, “We’ve always opposed these things, in our back yard, in our state, someplace else.”
Sen. Harry Reid’s office has a similar explanation. Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., sent a letter to Norton and Reid received a donation a day later.
And so the story goes, even as U.S. prosecutors investigate whether Abramoff’s contributions illegally influenced members of Congress or the Bush administration.
Fred Wertheimer, head of the campaign finance watchdog group Democracy 21, said the donations and letters raise “fundamental ethics questions about whether there is a conflict or an inappropriate use of the office that must be investigated by the House and Senate ethics committees.”
The Senate Indian Affairs Committee, led by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is investigating Abramoff’s alleged influence peddling among Norton associates. Last week, the committee questioned Italia Federici, the director of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, a group founded by Norton before she became interior secretary that received $500,000 in donations from Abramoff. Did Abramoff ply Federici with donations to gain access to Norton, whose office oversees tribal casinos?
“Any objective observer would see that there is a clear connection between contributions to your organization and work that you would have been doing on behalf of Mr. Abramoff with the Department of the Interior,” McCain told Federici.
Meanwhile, a partner of Abramoff and ex-aide to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, was charged Friday with conspiracy to defraud American Indian tribes of millions of dollars. Here again, money shouts.
