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Feds:
While Corrupting Congress and By John Pacenti Abramoff was sentenced last week in Washington to four years in federal prison for fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials, such as former U.S. Rep. Robert W. Ney, R-Ohio. Abramoff already is two years into a nearly six-year sentence for another fraud case involving the purchase of the Dania Beach-based SunCruz gambling cruise line. U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle could have sentenced Abramoff to 11 years, but she gave him credit for helping the FBI investigate a number of politicos caught in the lobbyist's vast influence-peddling scandal. Abramoff's two federal sentences will run concurrently. Greenberg has said much of Abramoff's conduct was unknown to the Miami-based law firm until he pleaded guilty in Washington in 2006. "The acts of Jack Abramoff were illegal and a result of his efforts to deceive his clients and his former firm. He was asked to leave our firm more than four years ago," Greenberg spokeswoman Jill Perry said. "His plea agreement acknowledges that he defrauded Greenberg Traurig, and the restitution order recognizes that our firm was a victim of his illegal acts." Huvelle ordered Abramoff to pay $15 million in restitution. Perry didn't have comment regarding any restitution to Greenberg Traurig. Abramoff cost his former employer plenty, the memo shows. Abramoff encouraged his lobbying team to conceal the identity of recipients of trips, dinners and other gifts on internal Greenberg Traurig reports to hide the identity of public officials receiving the favors, according to the government sentencing memo. Also noted, but not in detail, was that Abramoff committed private honest services fraud against his employer. "He directed a wireless company to pay lobbying fees due to Greenberg Traurig to Abramoff's nonprofit, the Capital Athletic Foundation," the memo states. A 2005 Senate inquiry found the charity was used to pay for overseas trips for Ney, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed. CAF also was used to funnel large fees from Indian tribes to lawmakers. Prosecutors say Abramoff asked a tribal client to pay the "vast bulk" of his fees through DeLay aide Michael Scanlon's public relations firm, Capital Campaign Strategies, which cut fees meant for Greenberg. Abramoff also convinced the Pueblo of Sandia Indian tribe in New Mexico to hire Scanlon, reducing Greenberg's proposed fee from $125,000 to $50,000 per month. Because of the Scanlon hire, Greenberg lost its share of the additional fees that might have been paid by the Sandia tribe to Abramoff, depending on the outcome of their negotiations, according to the sentencing memorandum. The tribe hired Abramoff and Scanlon to lobby on its behalf in a legal dispute related to a mountain revered by the tribe as sacred. Other times, Abramoff scammed Greenberg Traurig by simply having his lobbyists pad their hours to get higher bonuses, according to prosecutors. "Lobbyists regularly shifted expenses from one client to another or padded hours in order to make it appear that they performed more work than they actually did, a fact which may have created a false impression about what the lobbyists were actually doing for their nonretainer clients," the memo states. Perry said she couldn't comment on the specifics of the fraud or the restitution owed to Greenberg Traurig. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary K. Butler outlined the fraud against Greenberg Traurig that first surfaced at a Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing in 2004. U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., declared "credible law firms were taken advantage of." Not all of the costs associated with Abramoff were mentioned in the sentencing memo, though. The firm negotiated settlements with several of Abramoff's tribal clients, such as the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas, which claimed Abramoff and others took part in a scheme that shut down the tribe's casino. Abramoff would tell the tribes -- such as the Tigua -- that he would work for free if they hired Scanlon. "In fact, Abramoff and Scanlon agreed that Abramoff would receive 50 percent of the net profits," the memo stated. They would often work against interests of the tribes they represented. For instance, Abramoff and Scanlon represented the Louisiana Coushatta in that tribe's efforts to close casinos in Texas -- a direct conflict with the interest of the Tigua, who wanted to reopen a casino in El Paso. The Daily Business Review reported in April that Greenberg Traurig refunded $324,000 in lobbying fees to Guam to get the island territory to drop felony charges against the firm. The firm faced charges of theft by deception, theft and conspiracy. Prosecutors say Greenberg became entangled in Guam's criminal investigation after the fallen lobbyist billed the territory for work on projects he wasn't hired to pursue. Jack Abramoff Gets Four Years in Corruption Scandal By Matt Apuzzo Jack Abramoff, the once-powerful lobbyist at the heart of a far-reaching political corruption scandal, was sentenced to four years in prison Thursday by a judge who said the case had shattered the public's confidence in government. Abramoff, who fought back tears as he declared himself a broken man, appeared crestfallen as the judge handed down a sentence lengthier than prosecutors had sought. Over the past three years, Abramoff has come to symbolize corruption and the secret deals cut between lobbyists and politicians in back rooms or on golf courses or private jets. The scandal shook Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to Capitol Hill and contributed to the Republicans' loss of Congress in 2006. "I come before you as a broken man," Abramoff said at his sentencing before U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle. "I'm not the same man who happily and arrogantly engaged in a lifestyle of political and business corruption." He added later that, "My name is the butt of a joke, the source of a laugh and the title of a scandal." Already two years into a prison term from a separate case in Florida, Abramoff, 49, will have spent about six years in prison by the time he is released, far longer than he and his attorneys expected for a man who became the key FBI witness in his own corruption case. With Abramoff's help, the Justice Department has won corruption convictions against former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles and several top Capitol Hill aides. Because of that cooperation, prosecutors were reserved in their comments to the court. Rather than regaling the court with a summary of the misdeeds and the seriousness of the corruption, the Justice Department said little in court while urging leniency. Defense attorney Abbe Lowell portrayed Abramoff as a conflicted man. Yes, he corrupted politicians with golf junkets, expensive meals and luxury seats at sporting events. But he also donated millions of dollars to charity, and his good deeds were catalogued in hundreds of letters from friends. "How can we be talking about the same person?" Lowell said. "But that's the record: A modern-day 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.'" Huvelle could have sent Abramoff to prison for 11 years but showed leniency because of his work with the FBI. She rejected, however, proposals to reduce the sentence even further by giving Abramoff credit for the time he already has spent in prison on a fraudulent casino deal in Florida. Abramoff could appeal the sentence because Justice Department infighting is partly responsible for the lengthy prison term. Prosecutors in Washington had hoped to combine the casino case and the corruption case into one plea deal. But Florida prosecutors refused to give up their piece, as did Washington prosecutors, so the deal was split in two. Huvelle seemed perplexed by that decision, even as prosecutor Mary Butler asked her to treat the two cases as one. Neither Lowell nor the Justice Department spoke after court. Candidate
Turned to Abramoff By Jason McLure Even without the help of Jack Abramoff, by most accounts Glen Nager was a strong candidate for a judgeship on what is widely seen as the nations second most important court. Having argued his first Supreme Court case as a 28-year-old assistant to Reagan-era Solicitor General Charles Fried, Nager has long been regarded as something of a legal prodigy. By 2001, 14 years after that first argument, Nager had frequently appeared before the Court and the nation’s other top appeals courts. In private practice, he quickly rose through the ranks of the appellate group at Jones Day, one of the world’s largest law firms. His friends and acquaintances included former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, noted conservative appellate Judge Laurence Silberman, and Michael Carvin, a top Republican lawyer who represented then-presidential candidate George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore. Nager now chairs the appellate group at Jones Day. But back in early 2001, Nager had his sights set on another job. He wanted the president to nominate him to a lifetime spot on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a 10-judge court known as something of a training ground for Supreme Court nominees. (Four of the current nine justices once sat on the court.) Openly campaigning for a judicial nomination is seen as unseemly. But behind the scenes, competition is intense. Potential nominees have been known to send four-inch-thick binders of information about themselves; and at least one applicant in recent years has sent the Justice Department a videotape. "Getting the opportunity is a bit like being struck by lightning," says Eleanor Acheson, who headed the Justice Department office responsible for vetting judges under President Bill Clinton. "It’s just very hard." To increase his chances, in early 2001 Nager turned to Abramoff, then a lobbyist at Greenberg Traurig, for help with an enterprise Nager referred to as "The Project." That year, Nager and Abramoff traded a series of e-mails about Nager’s ultimately unsuccessful campaign to land a spot on the federal bench. "[I]t seems to me that the goal here is to make the case that I should be the next court of appeals nominee," Nager wrote to Abramoff in early March. "The point is that I have the best chance of going through." The e-mails indicate that Abramoff lobbied White House political adviser Karl Rove on Nager’s behalf and that Nager repeatedly sought Abramoff’s advice on strategy. The messages became public this fall, when the House Government Reform Committee released a report on Abramoff and his associates, documenting nearly 500 contacts with the White House on a variety of matters. The report was based largely on thousands of pages of e-mail correspondence by Abramoff and his colleagues, turned over to the committee by Greenberg Traurig. "Nager was a frequent e-mailer to Abramoff," notes the report. "His e-mail was sometimes lengthy." To be sure, the messages provide no evidence of any illegal or unethical activity by Nager. But the exchanges offer a rare glimpse into one man’s aggressive effort to garner a top federal judgeship. They also raise questions about what — if anything — Abramoff expected in return for helping Nager. Nager declined to comment for this article, as did Abramoff’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell. Abramoff himself entered a federal penitentiary in Cumberland, Md., last week to begin serving a six-year sentence after pleading guilty earlier this year to conspiracy and fraud charges in Miami over the purchase of SunCruz Casinos, a Florida gambling-boat company. Abramoff has also pleaded guilty to conspiracy, mail fraud, and tax evasion charges in Washington, D.C., and continues to cooperate with federal prosecutors in their ongoing probe of his lobbying contacts with congressional members and other federal officials. SUPREME DREAMS Friends of Nager say he knew Abramoff through Nager’s wife, Amy Berger, a former aide to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.). Berger had worked with Abramoff in the late 1990s at the law firm Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds. "The connection is strictly social through his wife, who worked with Jack," says Carvin, a partner of Nager’s at Jones Day who says Abramoff played a "minor" role in the effort to help Nager get a judgeship. In February 2001, Nager sent Abramoff a long e-mail with a subject line reading, "The Project." "Amy says that you are off for a 2 week trip," Nager wrote, ". . . presumably you will be picking up e-mails." In the e-mail, Nager provided Abramoff with a detailed description of his efforts to land a nomination and seeks his advice on a number of strategic points. "Should I be asking Charles Fried to send a letter?" Nager wrote. "Yes," Abramoff responded. Nager also outlined a plan to use an acquaintance to get inside information on White House deliberations via the deputy White House counsel at the time, Timothy Flanigan. "I talked to my friend [Reagan-era DOJ official] Roger Clegg. . . . He knows the new Deputy White House counsel pretty well, as well as others in [sic] White House counsel’s office. He is going to try to gather intelligence for us about who within that office is responsible on a day to day basis for putting files together," Nager wrote. "He is fully behind the effort, and at the appropriate time will organize a bunch of former Reagan and Bush Sr. Administration DOJ and White House lawyers behind the effort. For now, however, he will just do intelligence work, feed me the information, and await requests for action from me. (And I of course will wait for guidance from you.) "" Excellent," Abramoff responded.It’s unclear how well the intelligence-gathering plan worked. Flanigan says it was not his practice "to talk to anybody outside the White House about internal discussions regarding judicial nominees. "" I don’t recall that I had any discussions with [Clegg] about Glen Nager," says Flanigan, now the general counsel at Tyco, who last year withdrew his nomination to a top DOJ post amid criticism from Senate Democrats over his own connections to Abramoff.Clegg, a former DOJ official and now the general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a right-leaning think tank, says he did help Nager with his attempt to win a nomination, but he says he had no knowledge that Abramoff was also involved. Even if Nager’s supporters had been aware of his ties to Abramoff, it would not necessarily have been cause for much concern. At that time, Abramoff was still a respected and powerful Washington lobbyist. But in hindsight, it’s clear that by the winter of 2001, the seeds of the scandal that would bring down Abramoff and shock K Street had already been sown. On Feb. 6 of that year, Konstantinos Boulis, the founder of SunCruz Casinos, was gunned down in broad daylight in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., just months after Abramoff and business partner Adam Kidan had purchased the gambling-boat company from Boulis. (Kidan has also pleaded guilty to conspiracy and fraud and is expected to testify as a witness in the mob-related case against the three men charged with Boulis’ killing). And just eight months earlier, Abramoff and two of his clients had helped facilitate a $70,000 trip to Britain for then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and five others. On March 6, 2001, Abramoff had a scheduled meeting with Rove. Among the seven items on Abramoff’s agenda, according to documents released by the House committee: a line reading "Florida — Bush anti-cruise" (an apparent reference to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s past support for restrictions on gambling cruises); a "pro-free market Indian agenda" that would presumably benefit Abramoff’s Native American clients; and Glen Nager. That day, Nager wrote to Abramoff about a conversation he’d had with Viet Dinh, then the nominee to be the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy, which reviews judicial nominees. "He was very supportive," Nager wrote. "He was glad to get briefed on the situation. He obviously is not at this point up to speed on these issues." Dinh, according to the e-mail, told Nager that the first open seat on the D.C. Circuit was likely to go to John Roberts Jr., then an appellate lawyer at Hogan & Hartson. Dinh also told him that it was unclear if there would be another seat on the court open. "Interestingly, after we had talked for a while, he insisted upon cutting the conversation off. He said that he appreciated getting the lay of the land and that to protect both of us he did not feel the conversation should go further. I indicated that I agreed with him completely," Nager wrote to Abramoff in the March 6 e-mail. (Dinh, now a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, says he has no recollection of the conversation.) Abramoff wrote back to Nager that evening, giving a report on his meeting with Rove and referencing the hoped-for efforts of former Christian Coalition Director Ralph Reed on Nager’s behalf. "Great meeting with Karl," Abramoff wrote. " . . . I told him that you should be on the Court of Appeals and that you would be perfect to move up to the Supremes in the second term. "" He did not commit to do anything, but made some notes on your resume," Abramoff continued, later in the message. "I think he’ll poke into it and we’ll hear more soon."
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A Feast
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