{"id":5312,"date":"2005-09-21T10:25:25","date_gmt":"2005-09-21T14:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5312"},"modified":"2005-09-21T10:25:25","modified_gmt":"2005-09-21T14:25:25","slug":"abramoff-safavian-and-the-bush-gang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/abramoff-safavian-and-the-bush-gang\/","title":{"rendered":"Abramoff, Safavian, and the Bush gang"},"content":{"rendered":"

I noted<\/a> yesterday that David H. Safavian, the Bush administration’s top federal procurement official, was arrested<\/a> for obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Safavian’s former employer. It was the first major story linking the Abramoff scandal to the White House, but it’s also worth taking a moment to recognize other connections that have been established between the Bush administration and the disgraced Republican lobbyist.<\/p>\n

The DCCC’s Mike Disharoon, for example, highlighted<\/a> a number<\/a> of<\/a> links<\/a> between Abramoff and Bush’s Interior Department and Bureau of Indian Affairs.<\/p>\n

Moreover, as one of my commenters noted<\/a> last week, there’s even a connection between Abramoff and the big man himself, Karl Rove. Susan B. Ralston, a top Rove aide who recently testified<\/a> before the Plame grand jury, took a big pay cut, leaving the private sector a few years ago to start working in the White House. And what did Ralston do before serving as Rove’s right hand? She was Abramoff’s right hand. In fact, Abramoff specifically recommended her<\/a> for the job.<\/p>\n

To be sure, these are not exactly “slam-dunk” connections pointing to obvious wrongdoing, but I mention this because Abramoff’s record of corrupting congressional Republicans (DeLay, Ney, etc.) is, to an extent, incomplete. This guy had a hand in the entire Republican establishment — and that includes the Bush administration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I noted yesterday that David H. Safavian, the Bush administration’s top federal procurement official, was arrested for obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Safavian’s former employer. It was the first major story linking the Abramoff scandal to the White House, but it’s also worth taking a moment to recognize other connections that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}