In a move that should surprise no one, David Safavian, the Bush administration’s top federal procurement official and Jack Abramoff confidant was recently arrested, will be given a terrific opportunity — so long as he testifies against some of his former colleagues.
A lawyer for David H. Safavian, the former White House budget official arrested this week, accused the Justice Department on Wednesday of trying to coerce Mr. Safavian into cooperating with a criminal investigation of Jack Abramoff, the once-powerful Washington lobbyist. […]
In an interview, Ms. Van Gelder described as a “stretch” the central charge against Mr. Safavian: that he lied when he asserted to investigators that Mr. Abramoff had no business with the General Services Administration in 2002.
She suggested that while Mr. Safavian might have talked with Mr. Abramoff about the lobbyist’s interest that year in acquiring two parcels of federal land, the conversations did not constitute “business.”
Is this a compelling defense? Hardly.
On July 22, 2002, Abramoff sent Safavian an e-mail with a proposed draft letter that “at least two members of Congress” could send to GSA supporting the lease, according to the affidavit. “Does this work, or do you want it to be longer?” Abramoff asked.
Three days later, Safavian forwarded Abramoff an e-mail describing how an employee at OMB was resisting Abramoff’s plan to lease space at the post office. “I suspect we’ll end up having to bring some Hill pressure to bear on OMB,” Safavian messaged Abramoff.
On the same day Safavian discussed the golf trip with the ethics office, he sent an e-mail to Abramoff from his home computer, advising him how to “lay out a case for this lease.” Abramoff subsequently wrote in an e-mail to his wife and two officials of the school that Safavian had shown him a map of the property at his GSA office but had cautioned that Abramoff should not visit again “given my high profile politically.”
Safavian nonetheless arranged a meeting for Abramoff’s wife and business partner with officials at GSA on the day before he departed for Scotland aboard Abramoff’s chartered jet. The trip cost more than $120,000 and was paid for mostly by a charity founded and run by Abramoff, the Capital Athletic Foundation.
Sounds like a whole lot of “business” to me.
Of course, Safavian still has a way out — which should make a lot of Republicans in DC nervous.
The widening investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff is moving beyond the confines of tawdry influence-peddling to threaten leading figures in the Republican hierarchy that dominates Washington.
This week’s arrest of David Safavian, the former head of procurement at the Office of Management and Budget, in connection with a land deal involving Abramoff brings the probe to the White House for the first time.
Safavian once worked with Abramoff at one lobbying firm and was a partner of Grover Norquist, a national Republican strategist with close ties to the White House, at another. Safavian traveled to Scotland in 2002 with Abramoff, Representative Robert Ney of Ohio and another top Republican organizer, Ralph Reed, southeast regional head of President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who once called Abramoff “one of my closest and dearest friends,” already figures prominently in the investigation of the lobbyist’s links to Republicans. The probe may singe other lawmakers with ties to Abramoff, such as Republican Senator Conrad Burns of Montana, as well as Ney.
“These people all shared transactions together,” said former House Democratic counsel Stan Brand, now a partner in the Washington-based Brand Law Group. “That’s always something that worries defense lawyers.”
So many criminal targets, so few federal prosecutors….