In March, Vanity Fair published an item about Jack Abramoff’s White House connections that, at least at the time, raised some eyebrows. The political world knew all about the disgraced GOP lobbyist’s work on the Hill with ethically-challenged lawmakers like Tom DeLay and Bob Ney, but this piece highlighted additional work at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
Ken [tag]Mehlman[/tag], for example, was the White House political director from 2001 to 2003, before taking over at the Republican National Committee. We learned in March that Mehlman had Sabbath dinner at Abramoff’s house, and offered to pick up Abramoff’s tab at Signatures, Abramoff’s own restaurant.
Over the weekend, we learned quite a bit more about their connections.
For five years, Allen [tag]Stayman[/tag] wondered who ordered his removal from a State Department job negotiating agreements with tiny Pacific island nations — even when his own bosses wanted him to stay. Now he knows.
Newly disclosed e-mails suggest that the ax fell after intervention by one of the highest officials at the [tag]White House[/tag]: Ken Mehlman, on behalf of one of the most influential lobbyists in town, Jack [tag]Abramoff[/tag].
The e-mails show that Abramoff, whose client list included the Northern Mariana Islands, had long opposed Stayman’s work advocating labor changes in that U.S. commonwealth, and considered what his lobbying team called the “Stayman project” a high priority.
“Mehlman said he would get him fired,” an Abramoff associate wrote after meeting with Mehlman, who was then White House political director.
And sure enough, Stayman was fired. It was a fairly straightforward situation: Stayman’s work at the State Department got in Abramoff’s way, Abramoff asked Mehlman to use his White House power to do something about it, and Mehlman did. That’s not all — Mehlman also helped an Abramoff client, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, secure $16.3 million for a new jail that government analysts concluded was not necessary and helped Abramoff obtain a White House endorsement in 2002 of the Republican gubernatorial ticket in the U.S. territory of Guam.
Asked about his relationship with Abramoff a few months ago, Mehlman said, “Abramoff is someone who we don’t know a lot about. We know what we read in the paper.”
Given what we’ve learned since, that sounds … what’s the word … false.
Asked yesterday on CNN whether he had fired Stayman at Abramoff’s request, Mehlman hedged.
“I did not have the authority, as the political director, to fire anybody. It wasn’t my decision…..
“My job as a political director, and any job as a political director, is to hear from people, whether it’s about personnel or about policy, and make sure that the policy-makers understand their concerns.”
In other words, here’s Mehlman’s defense in a nutshell: Abramoff asked me to deal with Stayman, so I used my power as the political director of the White House to press the staff at the State Department about these “concerns.” The State Department resisted, but after the pressure increased, officials eventually gave in and showed Stayman the door.
How could anyone consider these facts and think Mehlman was responsible?
Billmon had a compelling response.
I would call Ken Mehlman a sleazy liar, but that would imply that he — or rather, it — has some conception of the difference between truth and falsehood. That’s a human trait. But I’ve yet to see any convincing evidence that Mehlman is, in fact, a real human being, instead of a pre-programmed hologram stored on some computer at Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington.
For that matter, D.K., Josh Marshall’s weekend fill-in, asked, “Remember the good old days when someone like Mehlman could get busted for such a baldfaced lie and there would be serious adverse consequences, personally and politically?”
Frankly, it’s been six years, and my memory of a reality-based political system is starting to fade.
