EVERYBODY KNOWS JACK

Late of Friday, the White House dropped the news that Karl Rove's aide had to quit because of Abramoff. They wanted to bury the story that Abramoff tentacles ran so deep in to the White House:

A top aide to White House strategist Karl Rove resigned yesterday after disclosures that she accepted gifts from and passed information to now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, becoming the first official in the West Wing to lose a job in the influence-peddling scandal.

Rove's aide, Susan Ralston, used to work for Abramoff. She wasn't the only person in the West Wing to have close contacts with the disgraced, corrupt lobbyist. The full story of Abramoff's relationship with Karl Rove and then-political director Kenh Mehlman hasn't been told. Today's NY Times editorial wants to know more -- so do we:

It is plain that Mr. Abramoff had unusual access. As for his effectiveness, Mr. Abramoff rated the results as “mixed.” But he scored some important victories. In 2002, for example, the administration made the unusual decision to release $16.3 million to a Mississippi tribe Mr. Abramoff represented, notwithstanding the Justice Department’s opposition to the project. The role campaign gifts and contacts between Mr. Abramoff and Mr. Mehlman may have played in this action is a matter warranting close scrutiny by prosecutors, and further digging by the committee.

As Tom Davis of Virginia, the Republican chairman of the committee, and Henry Waxman of California, the ranking Democrat, take pains to note, their report is based on documents that were provided under subpoena by Mr. Abramoff’s firm and, for the most part, tell just one side of the story. The White House spin is that Mr. Abramoff had a well-known affinity for exaggerating the impact of his lobbying efforts. If so, full disclosure of relevant records by the White House could help support that claim. Meanwhile, the idea that Mr. Abramoff exerted no influence with the administration seems about as believable as Mark Foley’s early claim that his only interest in 16-year-old pages was “mentoring.”

This White House lies about everything. There's no reason to think they're not lying about Abramoff. Actually, given the shenanigans involved, there is every reason to think they are lying.

http://tinyurl.com/punb6


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The Jack Abramoff scandal will be with us for at least a year to come, perhaps longer. Just two weeks ago, the House Government Reform Committee issued a blockbuster report revealing hundreds of contacts between Abramoff's team and the White House that resulted in the resignation last Friday of Karl Rove's assistant Susan Ralston.

The trail doesn't stop there, of course. So we sat down with National Journal's Peter Stone, the author of the forthcoming book Heist: Superlobbyist Jack Abramoff, His Republican Allies, And the Buying of Washington, who told us about how Abramoff operated, how the investigation is progressing, and what to expect next.

How much of the stuff in the recent Government Reform Report on Abramoff's ties to the Bush Administration is new?

Stone: I think there’s a fair amount of new detail in the Government Reform Report but I don’t think it’s the whole story by any means yet. I think we’ve now got a more conclusive e-mail trail from Abramoff and his associates to folks at the White House that show a little over 400 contacts apparently over a three year period between Team Abramoff and the White House.

This is all interesting stuff, and beyond that, there’s a section of the report which talks about results, which show that Jack had mixed results, but some of the results that were achieved seem suggestive, interesting ones that could lead to more investigations by Congressional investigators and perhaps by other investigators as well.

Whether any of this leads to criminal investigations, I think it’s too early to say, much too early to say. I think the report doesn’t flesh out a lot of stuff. It came out rather quickly, it seems, it’s unclear why it came out right now, but there’s a lot of good material here for reporters and investigators, both on the Hill and elsewhere perhaps to dig into in the coming months....

much more here: http://tinyurl.com/q8ldr
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