Via Atrios via Oliver Willis's poster, Quaker in a Basement:
"Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean says that Democrats took no money from Jack Abramoff in the lobbying scandal, but a public-interest group official said yesterday that they did accept contributions from the lobbyist’s clients, who were trying to buy influence."
The same misdirection as before, insinuating that campaign contributions are the scandal.
*snippage*
"But Republican officials and a major public-integrity group counter his assertion with a growing list of Democrats have received contributions from American Indian tribes represented by Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to tax evasion and fraud in connection with his lobbying activities."
In other words, “Abramoff stole money from the Indians, so if you got some, you must’ve stolen it too.”
"[B]oth Republicans and Democrats received contributions from Indian tribes that were represented at one time by Jack Abramoff,” said Lawrence Noble, executive director and general counsel for the Center for Responsive Politics.
“So the answer to Dean depends on how you define scandal,” Mr. Noble said. “I would say, broadly defined as a question of the tribes’ buying influence in Washington, it includes Democrats.”
Except nobody has yet accused the Indian tribes of being the problem here. They were the ones that got screwed over by Abramoff.
"The political news wire the Hotline has compiled a list of nearly three dozen Democrats who have received campaign contributions from Abramoff-related tribes. More than a dozen of them to date have refused to give back the money, saying that the contributions were legal."
“Abramoff-related tribes”?
Funny. He doesn’t look Native American.
Abramoff stole the money he gave to Republicans illegally from his native American casino-operating clients. If you own a casino, you can legally give money to whomever you wish. See, that's why the operative term is legally.
Casinos are scams. But it isn't illegal to own one. Nor is it illegal to donate to anybody openly within Federal guidelines. It's illegal to steal money and covertly give it to get favors.
...Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife operated.
Abramoff’s White House guests were the chiefs of two of the six casino-rich Indian tribes he and his partner Mike Scanlon ultimately billed $82 million for services tribal leaders now claim were never performed or were improperly performed. Together the six tribes would make $10 million in political contributions, at Abramoff’s direction, almost all of it to Republican campaigns of his choosing...
Since the Post’s Susan Schmidt broke the Jack Abramoff story, the media has focused on the stunning $82 million Abramoff and Scanlon billed six tribes for lobbying and public relations work. Far less attention has been paid to the political contributions, by Abramoff’s account $10 million, made by the six tribes. That piece of the story involves the K Street Project, which moves the money of corporate lobbyists and their clients into the accounts of Republican candidates, PACs, and issue advocacy groups.
...Abramoff advised tribal leaders that the contributions were the cost of doing business in Washington, where he could protect them from other tribes trying to open casinos to compete with those that already had them. He sent orders for the checks to be cut, designating each recipient. On March 6, 2002, for example, Coushatta Tribal Council Chair Lovelin Poncho followed Abramoff’s orders and disbursed $336,300 in tribal funds...
The Coushattas, a southwest Louisiana tribe of 837 members, operate a casino that does an estimated $300 million in annual business. The $32 million they paid Abramoff and Scanlon makes the tribe the largest victim of the fraud their lawyers now allege in a lawsuit filed by Texas plaintiff’s firm Provost Umphrey...
There's crime, and then there's victims. Sometimes the victims seem a little criminal. The biggest criminals make the exploitation cycle what it is.
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