The Abramoff scandal investigation

The filings in U.S. District Court do not allege any wrongdoing by the elected officials but list them in documents portraying David Safavian, a former GSA chief of staff, as an active adviser to Abramoff, giving the lobbyists tips on how to use members of Congress to navigate the agency's bureaucracy [...]

First Pic of Bush and Abramoff, Abramoff in upper left.

Roxxxanne wrote:

First Pic of Bush and Abramoff, Abramoff in upper left.

I have a photo of myself standing in the corner while President Reagan was shaking peoples hands.
So,according to your logic,that means I knew him and had dealings with him?

mysteryman wrote:

Roxxxanne wrote:

First Pic of Bush and Abramoff, Abramoff in upper left.

I have a photo of myself standing in the corner while President Reagan was shaking peoples hands.
So,according to your logic,that means I knew him and had dealings with him?

lets see.
Did you raise $100,000 for Bush in 2 election cycles?
Did you visit the WH on at least 12 occassions?
Did the President talk to you about your children?
Were you invited to a bbq at the Crawford ranch?

A picture doesn't mean a whole lot. The other dealings do. Karl Rove is also in the picture. By your logic, the President doesn't know who Rove is either.

Those are ridiculous answers.

Those are ridiculous answers.

Ex-Malasian Leader Says He Paid Abramoff

Monday, February 20, 2006

Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Monday that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was paid $1.2 million to organize his 2002 meeting with President Bush, but denied the money came from the Malaysian government.

Mahathir told reporters he was aware a payment was made to Abramoff, but he didn't know who made it. He said he had been persuaded by the U.S. think tank Heritage Foundation to meet with Bush at the time.

"It is true that somebody paid but it was not the (Malaysian) government," Mahathir said. "I understood some people paid a sum of money to lobbyists in America but I do not know who these people were and it was not the Malaysian government."

Mahathir said the Heritage Foundation believed he could help "influence (Bush) in some way regarding U.S. policies."

Mahathir visited the White House at a time when this Southeast Asian country had emerged as a key U.S. ally in the war on terror, following Mahathir's crackdown on suspected Islamic militants although he had been consistently critical of Bush's foreign policies.

Abramoff, once among Washington's top lobbyists, pleaded guilty last month to charges that he and a former partner concocted a fake wire transfer to make it appear they were putting a sizable stake of their own money into a 2000 purchase of casinos.

Abramoff also has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from an investigation into his ties to members of Congress and to the Bush administration.

Lobbyist Abramoff Describes Pictures of a "Bearded, Fatter Me" With President Bush

[Editor's note: A version of this story was posted briefly on Monday of this week. Within an hour, Jack Abramoff contacted the author, Washingtonian national editor Kim Eisler, and asked that the report be deleted from the Washingtonian.com Web site because public disclosure of his communications would damage his status as a witness and undermine his plea agreement with federal prosecutors. Abramoff has pleaded guilty to three felonies and could receive 31 years in prison for his part in the lobbying scandal. US District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle will decide the length of Abramoff's prison term. The link was taken down while Mr. Abramoff's concerns were investigated, but Mr. Eisler found no confirmation that publication of the item would damage any aspect of the wide-ranging probe. Thus we are posting this updated story.]

Time magazine published a photograph that showed Jack Abramoff in a scene with President Bush. This photo is not one of the five photos referred to in the February Washingtonian story that revealed the existence of pictures of the two men together. One of the photos referred to in the Washingtonian story was taken at the same event as the photo published by Time; in it the President and Abramoff are shaking hands. The Time photo showed Abramoff in the background.

In January Washingtonian national editor Kim Eisler was allowed to see the photos he reported on, but Abramoff would not release them for publication. Several of the pictures had hung prominently in Abramoff's office and had been seen by many visitors, including Eisler, who first met Abramoff while working on a book, Revenge of the Pequots, about Native American casinos.

When newspapers reported that the White House was in a "desperate frenzy" to find photographs of Abramoff and Bush together, Eisler described in his February Washingtonian Power Players column the ones he had seen.

Before publishing the item, Eisler contacted Abramoff to get details about the circumstances in which the photos were taken. The White House has repeatedly claimed that Bush did not know Abramoff and that the pictures must have been taken at a White House holiday party, when the President shakes hands with hundreds of people he doesn't know. None of the photographs seen by Eisler matched that description.

In various January communications with Eisler, Abramoff confirmed that he and President Bush had met in "almost a dozen settings." Abramoff said the President had "joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids. Perhaps he has forgotten everything. Who knows."

In the photograph taken at the same event as the one published by Time, Abramoff said he and the President were discussing working out with weights.

Other photographs included a picture of Bush and Abramoff standing together with "Cheshire cat grins"; pictures of Bush and what Abramoff characterized as the "bearded fatter me"; a picture of Bush chatting with Abramoff's twin daughters ("Oh, you are twins; I have twins," Abramoff quoted Bush as saying); a picture of Bush, House speaker Dennis Hastert, and Abramoff's children; and a picture of Laura Bush with Abramoff's wife, Pam, and the twin girls, who had led the Pledge of Allegiance at the event (said Abramoff: "Laura went ga-ga over their being twins").

A frustrated Abramoff, who feels he has been abandoned by many of his conservative friends, added, "They will come up with excuse after excuse as to how and why he did not know me. I could have spent four months alone with him in Bolivia and he would not know me."

Abramoff says Bush is lying about not knowing him.

March 9, 2006 03:24 AM / Bush Leagues .

Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff says President Bush knew him well enough to joke with him about weightlifting. "What are you benching, buff guy?" Abramoff said Bush asked him. The president has said he doesn't know Abramoff.
Abramoff said he finds it hard to believe Bush doesn't remember the 10 or so photos he and members of his family had snapped with the president and first lady.

"He (Bush) has one of the best memories of any politician I have ever met," Abramoff wrote in an e-mail, according to Vanity Fair's April issue being released this week. "Perhaps he has forgotten everything. Who knows?"

Abramoff pleaded guilty Jan. 4 to charges that he and a former partner, Adam Kidan, concocted a fake wire transfer to make it appear they were putting a sizable stake of their own money into a multimillion-dollar purchase of SunCruz Casinos gambling fleet in 2000. Abramoff also has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a probe into his ties with members of Congress and the Bush administration.

"I had my picture taken with him, evidently," Bush said of Abramoff on Jan. 26. "I've had my picture taken with a lot of people."

"I frankly don't even remember having my picture taken with the guy," Bush added. "I don't know him."

A few days later, Abramoff wrote to Washingtonian magazine that he had met briefly with the president nearly a dozen times and that Bush knew him well enough to make joking references to Abramoff's family.

Abramoff told Vanity Fair that he once was invited to Bush's Texas ranch where he would have joined with other big Bush fundraisers. Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew, said he didn't go because the event fell on the Sabbath.

The lobbyist said that when Bush made a speech to fundraisers in 2003, he sat just a few feet from the president. Abramoff, the only lobbyist on the dais, was seated between Republican Sens. George Allen of Virginia and Orrin Hatch of Utah.

Three former associates of Abramoff have told The Associated Press the lobbyist frequently told them he had strong ties to the White House through its deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove.

Asked about the former Abramoff associates' accounts, the White House said Rove and Abramoff were leaders of a young Republicans group decades ago.

"Mr. Rove remembers they had met at a political event in the 1990s," White House spokeswoman Erin Healy has said. "Since then, he would describe him as a casual acquaintance."

According to Vanity Fair, Rove's relationship with Abramoff was deeper.

After Bush took office, Susan Ralston, Abramoff's administration assistant, assumed the same post with Rove at the White House, where Abramoff met with Rove at least once, the magazine said.

Rove dined several times at Abramoff's former restaurant in Washington, Signatures, and was Abramoff's guest in the owner's box of the NCAA basketball playoffs a few years ago, sitting for much of the game at Abramoff's side, Vanity Fair reported.

The White House has not released any photos that Bush took with Abramoff, but acknowledged the authenticity of one that has been made public. In the 2001 photo, Bush is seen shaking hands with the leader of an Indian tribe that was an Abramoff client. The lobbyist is in the background.

Abramoff said he thought about, but decided against, selling his photos with the Bushes for money. Publications were making Abramoff offers that rose to the low seven figures, Vanity Fair reports.

He blames the Bush administration for the media attention.

"My so-called relationship with Bush, Rove and everyone else at the White House has only become important because instead of just releasing details about the very few times I was there, they created a feeding frenzy by their deafening silence," Abramoff told the magazine.

"The Democrats, on the other hand, are going overboard, virtually insisting I was there to plan the invasion of Iraq."