I continue to keep one eye on the burgeoning scandal surrounding GOP lawyer/lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay spokesman Mike Scanlon, and Christian Coalition/Bush campaign golden boy Ralph Reed. It’s percolating along nicely and could lead to some serious legal troubles for everyone involved.
When we last left the adventure, a criminal investigation was underway into abuses connected to gambling on Indian reservations and a lucrative lobbying campaign that doesn’t seem to have done any lobbying. The matter is before a federal grand jury and the subject of FBI, IRS, and Senate Indian Affairs Committee probes.
Things got slightly worse for Jack Abramoff this week, when Roll Call reported that an obscure non-profit organization Abramoff ran accepted a $50,000 contribution from a tribe that was fighting against another one of Abramoff’s tribal clients, which would appear to be an obvious conflict of interest.
In 2002, Abramoff, then working for the law firm Greenberg Traurig, helped one of his clients, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, battle the Alabama-Coushattas of Livingston, Texas, a rival tribe that had opened a small casino in eastern Texas.
The Louisiana Coushattas were an important and highly lucrative client for Greenberg Traurig, paying the Miami-based firm more than $2 million for its lobbying services during 2002 – a huge sum for a non-corporate lobbying client.
But in July of that year, the Alabama-Coushattas gave $50,000 to the Capital Athletic Foundation, a nonprofit organization controlled by Abramoff. The donation has caught the eye of investigators for the Indian Affairs Committee, which has been looking into the millions of dollars in fees collected by the controversial lobbyist from Indian tribes with gambling operations from 2001 to 2003.
In interviews, several ethics experts suggested that Abramoff faced a clear conflict of interest in the matter, and added that Abramoff was ethically bound to inform the Louisiana Coushattas of the donation once it occurred.
Just as importantly, why in the world did the Alabama-Coushattas make such a large donation to an obscure nonprofit?
This is a controversy that could devastate the careers of everyone involved, especially the GOP insiders who are at the heart of the scandal. Stay tuned.