Weekly Standard wrote:The Friends of Jack Abramoff
They're not all Republicans.
by Matthew Continetti
01/16/2006, Volume 011, Issue 17
"THIS IS A REPUBLICAN scandal," Harry Reid, the Democrats' leader in the Senate, told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace in December. Wallace had asked Reid about his relationship with Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who last week pleaded guilty, in two separate investigations, to five counts of mail fraud, tax evasion, wire fraud, and conspiracy. Reid said there was no relationship. "Abramoff gave me no money," he said. "So don't lump me in with Jack Abramoff."
Reid might not have taken money directly from Abramoff, a lifelong Republican and conservative activist, but he did accept donations--some $66,000 worth--from Abramoff's clients, Indian tribes operating casinos throughout the United States. And Reid's willingness to do so, and his reluctance to return the Abramoff-related funds, as many of his Republican colleagues have done, suggests that Washington's latest lobbying scandal may be more complex than partisans have let on, and more difficult for Democrats to make partisan hay out of than pundits now think.
What follows is an excellent description of the illegal money-making schemes of Scanlon and Abramhoff. What is really interesting though is their plan to influence Congress...a Congress which, at the time included a Republican House and Democratic Senate. They decided to add a rider onto the Help America Vote Act of 2002, chosen because it was a sure-bet bound to be passed by both houses. All they needed was to get the congressional leaders for the process to go along with the deal. Who do they approach first....None else but Chris Dodd, Democrat from Connecticut. Bob Ney came in
after Scanlon and Abramhoff were confident they had Dodd in their pocket.
Weekly Standard wrote:
Schwartz told Sen. John McCain in November 2004 that he recalled "an agreement between Mr. Abramoff and Senator Dodd early in the process. And Representative Ney came on the scene somewhat later." Schwartz's testimony jibes with the contents of an April 12, 2002, memo Scanlon sent to his tribal contacts, in which he wrote that "we have Senate support," but that "they are looking for political cover."
The route by which Scanlon had supposedly secured Dodd's cooperation was circuitous. His firm, Scanlon & Gould, aka Capital Campaign Strategies, paid another firm, Lunde & Burger, $50,000 to lobby the Connecticut Democrat. "He called me about the Tiguas' wanting to reopen their casino," Brian Lunde, a former Democratic National Committee executive director who in 2004 was the national chair of Democrats for Bush, later told the New York Times. "I checked around, and it was the formal position of the DNC to have that reopened." Lunde and Burger entered into a $10,000 subcontract with yet another "public relations strategist" to lobby Dodd directly. Enter Lottie Shackelford.
Who's Lottie Shackleford? None other than a member of Dodd's fundraising committee. She evidently takes the $10K to "to make personal contact with the Senator throughout the campaign starting in April and lasting through the passage of the legislation in October." In fairness to Dodd, when questioned in 2004, he admitted Shackelford approached him about adding the Tigua rider, but, according to Dodd, "the suggestion was summarily rejected." Now did Dodd return it because of some superior sense of ethics? No...Dodd later states..."with the problems of new casinos in Connecticut, it is a problem." So did Shackelford return the $10K....hardly...
Without Dodd's support Abramhoff and Scanlon were unable to get the rider added to the HAVA. The plan fell through, but everyone kept the money.
I've edited it somewhat, but encourage you all to read the full story at
Weekly Standard
