{"id":7737,"date":"2006-06-21T09:11:34","date_gmt":"2006-06-21T13:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7737"},"modified":"2006-06-21T09:11:34","modified_gmt":"2006-06-21T13:11:34","slug":"safavian-guilty-whos-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/safavian-guilty-whos-next\/","title":{"rendered":"Safavian guilty; who’s next?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday’s [tag]conviction[\/tag]<\/a> of former White House aide [tag]David Safavian[\/tag] is clearly good news for the ongoing criminal probe of Jack Abramoff and his network of “friends.” As Paul Kiel put it<\/a>, “Safavian tried wide-eyed innocence — let’s call it the Forest Gump defense — and it didn’t fly.”<\/p>\n

[tag]Safavian[\/tag] lied and obstructed justice, and one has to assume he won’t be the last to face similar charges. Indeed, perhaps the most interesting angle to yesterday’s conviction wasn’t just about Safavian, but also the questions it raised about the impact the conviction might have on others. Christy Hardin Smith explained<\/a> this quite well.<\/p>\n

Game on. Were I a member of Congress who had accepted bribes and other inducements in exchange for Congressional favors and earmarks and the like, I’d beat a path to the door of the Federal prosecutors working this case. Because David Safavian has just gotten his first taste of fear of sentencing, and they ought to as well.<\/p>\n

Word to the wise: first one to cut the deal gets the better one — the longer you wait, the less likely you are to get a deal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quite right. Jonathan Turley, a professor at the George Washington University School of Law, told the WaPo<\/a>, “This is the type of conviction that tends to loosen tongues.”<\/p>\n

For that matter, the Wall Street Journal noted<\/a> that the prosecutors’ success going after Safavian “could pressure more congressional aides to cooperate with the investigation, and complicate the re-election bids of a handful of Republican legislators named during the trial.”<\/p>\n

If I’m [tag]Bob Ney[\/tag] — or, for that matter, [tag]Ralph Reed[\/tag] — I’m probably asking my lawyers to call [tag]prosecutors[\/tag] this morning to see what kind of “options” are available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday’s [tag]conviction[\/tag] of former White House aide [tag]David Safavian[\/tag] is clearly good news for the ongoing criminal probe of Jack Abramoff and his network of “friends.” As Paul Kiel put it, “Safavian tried wide-eyed innocence — let’s call it the Forest Gump defense — and it didn’t fly.” [tag]Safavian[\/tag] lied and obstructed justice, and one […]<\/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-7737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7737","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=7737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}