Abramoff net may catch seven lawmakers, Coburn says

April 17, 2006

When all is said and done, and prosecutors have filed charges against those caught up in the Jack Abramoff scandal, how many members of Congress will face criminal charges? According to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), the total could be seven.

U-S Senator Tom Coburn isn’t naming names, but he expects six congressmen and a fellow senator will go to jail.

That’s because he thinks they’ll be facing corruption charges following investigations involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff and others.

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Wagoner last night, Coburn said that “if you’ve been keeping up with things, you’ve got a pretty good idea” of who the seven lawmakers are.

Seven would certainly be a lot for one corruption scandal. Let’s see, the senator has to be Conrad Burns. Picking the six House members is a little tougher, but at least four of the six would probably include Bob Ney, Tom DeLay, John Doolittle, and Don Young.

It’s so hard to keep track of all of Abramoff’s Republican friends….

I suspect Coburn is saying seven because he believes the seventh most culpable (got money, did things) congressman is a democrat. If the prosecutors decided to tighten their indictments to the most obviously guilty, it might stop at the five you have listed.

If they went after every congressman who got money through Abramoff, the number probably vastly exceeds seven.

By stepping in, he is probably trying to frame the prosecution, making the government go are far as he wants but not farther.

Hopefully, they will just ignore him.

  • The rumor I’ve seen regarding the number of House and Senate members AND aides being “investigated” by the DOJ’s Public Integrity unit –directly related to and only with regard to Abramoff and his organization — is upwards of 60. I suspect there will be a lot more than seven Reps and/or Senators that will at least resign/retire, even if it is only seven that actually go to prison.

    This, of course, does not address all of the OTHER ongoing investigations of Rethugs that have already led — or soon will lead — to more Rethugs going to prison aznd/or criminal convictions (Randy Duke, Bob Ney, governors in Ohio and Kentucky, Libby, Safavian, Frist, DeLay, just to name a few).

    The Rethugs really have developed a corrupt system to achieve and to maintain their power. This ignores, for purposes of this comment, the corrupt way that Rethugs have bastardized their “governance” duties (letting lobbyists write the legislation; freezing Dems out of conference committees, etc.).

    Republicans Lie and Cheat…. Had Enough? Vote Democratic!

  • Analytical Liberal,

    Republicans Lie and Cheat…. Had Enough? Vote Democratic!

    Although I completely agree with the characterization, too many people believe that all politicians lie. Thus, adding that word diminishes its impact. KISS, baby:

    Republicans Cheat. Had Enough? Vote Democratic!

  • Remember when Republicans liked to talk all the time about corruption and responsibility and balanced budgets?

    I wonder what happened?

  • “Remember when Republicans liked to talk all the time about corruption and responsibility and balanced budgets?

    I wonder what happened?” – Racerx

    😉 They got into power with an unnatural alliance of various ‘conservative’ strains in American politics, realized they could not maintain their electorial college advantage through (correct spelling here, CB) the implementation of their collective policies, many being contradictory, so they decided to buy off the irresponsible through deficit spending and corrupt the process to cloak their iniquities and win the support of the wealthy and influencial. 😉

    In short, they got power, they got corrupted.

    But the lesson is that the Republicanites existed so long as nothing but a catch-all for people opposing (hating really) the dominate Democratic political culture that no one looked clearly at the underlying conflicts of their positions. For instance, anti-tax advocates against fiscal conservatives or small-government libertarians against personal conduct criminalizers (aka, the Theocratic Reactionaries).

    If the Liberal/Moderate Democratic party wants to take power for more than two years, they damn well better get together in some off-site meetings and hammer out their own inconsistencies (on immigration and regulation, for instance).

  • Just to add to the corruption theme, Ex-Gov of Illinois George Ryan was convicted today and ALL corruption charges. Patrick Fitzgerald was the prosecutor….

  • …Republicans Cheat. Had Enough? Vote Democratic!…

    How ’bout even simpler:

    “Had Enough? Vote Democratic!”

    One can allow the voter to imagine any number of the sins of the modern GOP when making a decision about the state of the Union.

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