Follow the money
September 27th, 2005 by JoshI haven’t written much here about Jack Abramoff, the crooked Washington lobbyist currently under indictment, whose tentacles seem to snake into every facet of the Bush Administration cabal and the Republican party. From Karl Rove to Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, everyone seems to have a connection to Abramoff. This is a HUGE puzzle, but more and more pieces seem to be falling into place. Josh Marshall has an excellent analysis of the entire situation and how it relates to Timothy Flanigan, who is currently waiting to be confirmed as the Deputy Attorney General. He begins by pointing out that Flanigan initially worked as Deputy White House Counsel under Bush and then left to become General Counsel for Tyco Corp, which had moved offshore to Bermuda to avoid paying taxes. Flanigan then hired Abramoff to lobby for Tyco.
Didn’t he already have enough access to handle the issue on his own?
Good question. But there’s a pretty straightforward answer once you get a clear view of what sort of operation Abramoff was running.
So this a good opportunity to restate the point.
On paper, Jack Abramoff was a lobbyist. And he made a great deal of money for himself. But if you think of Jack Abramoff as just a crooked lobbyist most of the facts coming out about what he did don’t make a great deal of sense. He was a key player in a very big political machine and he was managing a slush fund.
Obviously this will be greeted by nothing other than denial from the Right since they all seem to be so deeply enmeshed in the corruption. But proving denial is more than just a river, the Times today reports that the administration tried to cover this whole thing up three years ago.
The Justice Department’s inspector general and the F.B.I. are looking into the demotion of a veteran federal prosecutor whose reassignment nearly three years ago shut down a criminal investigation of the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, current and former department officials report.
They said investigators had questioned whether the demotion of the prosecutor, Frederick A. Black, in November 2002 was related to his alert to Justice Department officials days earlier that he was investigating Mr. Abramoff. The lobbyist is a major Republican Party fund-raiser and a close friend of several Congressional leaders.
One can’t overemphasize enough how this corruption is endemic in the entire Republican party. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who have really been giving the corruptocrats hell recently, unveiled their new website BeyondDelay.org detailing the 13 most corrupt members of Congress — 11 of whom are Republicans. This thing is not stopping.
